Thoughts as Memorial Day approaches

When I was a child, I had a hard time understanding my mother's dedication to Decoration Day. We always went to the cemetery as a family that day while she placed flowers on the graves of her parents, brother and others. It wasn't until I lost my own parents, friends and siblings that I understood why she made sure they were all taken care of that day.

I don't spend the day at the cemetery placing flowers on everyone's grave, though. The best gesture I saw of something like that was a year or two ago, when my wife and her sisters visited their father's grave. He spent as much time as he could outdoors. One of my sisters-in-law picked some wild flowers along the road and laid on his grave. That to me was more fitting to the man than buying an arrangement from a florist. A man who spent his life in the woods probably wouldn't appreciate greenhouse-grown flowers, but he would appreciate something from the woods themselves.

Too many people I know are in cemeteries now. Last week, I learned that one of my best friends from high school and my early 20s died a couple of years ago from a brain tumor. I learned that another of my high school friends died about 15 years ago from getting ahold of some illegal drugs that were too strong.

My wife might tell me that some of these people aren't really gone. My daughter has a lot in common with my mother, even though they only knew each other for 15 months. My older son is a lot like his maternal grandfather and his maternal grandmother's father. My youngest child has the disadvantage of being a lot like his father except that he's a lot better looking and a lot smarter.

Beyond that, I don't know what else to say.