Decoration Day

For some a trip to the Cemetery is not a very good experience.  However, there are many stories and much history to be learned.

When I was a young lad, I would accompany my grandparents every spring to "decorate the graves."  My grandmother took special pride in making sure everything looked appropriate at the graves of her parents, brother and sister.   She also took great pride in knowing that an appropriate display of love and affection for my grandfather's parents was in place as well.   

Every year, we would head off to a certain nursery in Franklin to procure the appropriate flowers and small "yews"  - small evergreen fur bushes, for display on the gravesite.  The Buckley grave had appropriate granite urns for display of the "yews."  When the appointed date came - usually a few days before May 30th  (Yes, this was before the change in federal law that turned Memorial Day into a long weekend and retail extravaganza,) we would set out to place the flowers on the graves.    In the cemetery no planting is allowed, so appropriate "boxes" were fashioned for the display.   Every evening, right after dinner we would go back to the graves and make sure the flowers were watered appropriately, and to also make sure no one had decided to appropriate the flowers for another grave! (that did happen one year... I kid you not!) After a week or so, we would collect the flowers, and I would help my Grandmother transplant the flowers into her many flower beds that encircled her home on Burns Avenue.

Every year she would remind me that some day I would have to make sure the flowers and arrangements were placed on those graves, as well as her grave - which is in the same family plot on a beautiful small hill in Uxbridge.

I can still hear her saying those words some 40 + years later.

So every year, along about now, I go off and select the appropriate flowers for her grave, as well as the other family graves, including now my Mothers - up the road a piece in Whitinsville.  I place the flowers there, and say a little prayer and smile as I know how happy this makes not only Margaret Kirrane-Buckley but Helen Buckley as well.

I have a co-pilot now, and have had for the last 23 years or so.  My wife Lisa has joined in this activity, and has found out much information about her own family and their history. I think at this point she looks forward to Memorial Day weekend even more than I do!

So between all the parades, and festivities this weekend remember not only those that have served and are gone, but also all of those that helped you make you what you are today.  They are just as important!  I am sure Margaret Kirrane-Buckley would agree.