Honor veterans on Memorial Day

Since I lost my father, a U.S. Army Air Forces World War II veteran, in a car accident when I was 12, decorating his grave with flowers and attending the local Memorial Day programs with their fluttering flags and solemn words became something I looked forward to each year. The sound of taps fading into the air, the crash of a 21-gun salute and the military men and women standing at attention never failed to remind me of their sacrifice and my loss.

Although Memorial Day traditionally is a day set aside to honor deceased veterans, as my family lost more members, we began to honor every family member who died, veteran or not. It just made sense to us.

The week before the holiday, we would go out to the cemetery to clean the headstones. We would start with my father’s stone; edging it, cutting away any grass or weeds beginning to creep over the face. We would carefully brush the year’s accumulation of dirt out of the chiseled words on the white granite headstone the Department of Veterans Affairs provided for him, and then pour water over until it glistened in the sunlight. Then, we move on to the others.

Through the years my grandma and then my grandpa Graham were placed next to my father; their large double headstone to one side. His sister, my Aunt Shirley (Graham-Shearer), joined in the same row a few years later, while other Graham family members were placed in plots scattered throughout the same memorial garden; a Nebraska farm family now resting in Washington state soil.

We usually took the flowers out the day before Memorial Day, so they would be there, sparkling with dew early the next morning, to greet visitors as they arrived. Whether florist-delivered or homegrown; whether wreath, bouquet or single stem, the flowers all meant the same thing: someone still cared.

In the cemetery, I could find the graves of Uncle Kenney (Graham, Army, WWII), Uncle Jesse (Campbell, Navy WWII), my Grandpa and Grandma Sutter and my Dewey grandparents, who had moved to our town at the very end of their lives and were buried there. There was Aunt Vivian (Sutter-Duffy), Aunt Arleen (Graham-Tate) and my cousin, Merla Campbell Hamilton.

I remember with great fondness the flowers my Aunt Jean and Aunt Marie, both avid gardeners, would place on family graves. They would fill the single or double vases built-in to the headstones with huge bouquets of iris, peonies and lilacs, leaving no doubt those buried in these graves had not been forgotten.

It became harder for me to observe Memorial Day once I married and moved to the Spokane area. To my husband and his family, Memorial Day was simply looked at as the first camping trip of the year. For a few years I was able to piggyback a camping trip onto a quick trip home for the event. However, after his grandparents died, my Memorial Days began to include a visit to a local cemetery once again.

If we stayed in town, we often attended a memorial service. If we were heading for the woods, my family would visit his family’s graves either the week before or sometimes on our way out of town, carefully winding through the cemetery’s narrow lanes with our pickup full of motorcycles, our old Prowler trailer dragging behind.

One of my favorite memories was the first year my husband got Grandpa “Pa” Reinholt’s 1955 Buick Special running. We enjoyed driving the green and black, two-door sedan – the one with the burn in the backseat because the cigarette Grandma threw out the front window flew in the back and started the fabric seat on fire – to visit his grandparents at Riverside Cemetery.

Today, my family spends most of our Memorial Days enjoying outdoor adventures and the first three-day weekend of the summer. But, either before we go, or when we get back, we take time to remember our loved ones, especially those who served our country, through a visit to their grave, a floral remembrance and a silent prayer of thanks.

Last Saturday I received word that my last uncle on the Graham side of my family, Uncle Bob (Shearer, Navy, WWII) had died. The last time I saw him, he was standing at a grocery store selling poppies for his veterans group. His funeral was yesterday. Now all five of the young men my grandparents sent off to WWII – two sons and three sons-in-law, each who came home safely after the war – are no longer with us. Four lie in the cemetery in my hometown, while Uncle Burt (Tappy, Navy), who was a Pearl Harbor survivor, is buried near Seattle. We will not forget.