Memorial Day

We were having that conversation around dinner today - what the holiday meant, why we celebrate. We remembered the people who protect our country and people we have lost.

I was talking with my mom about how all those years she and her siblings were faithful to take her mother back to the family grave sites every Memorial Day. They always enjoyed their time together, but in the end might comment on how they would really rather do something else besides that on Memorial Day.

I remember that holiday growing up. We would ride in the back of a pick up truck across an overgrown field to the most picturesque small cemetery that was a perfect square with maybe about 50 gravestones. It still has a black wrought iron fence around it and some beautiful trees that have grown so massively over the years. This cemetery is where my grandmother's first husband, the grandfather we did not know is buried. My dad would cut the grass with a push mower and my mom would always change out the flowers to my grandmothers liking and my cousins and I would read all the headstones.

Since Grandma died just recently, this would mark the first year that her family really wouldn't have to make that trip to the cemeteries...but guess where they were. This time was tough for them as they remembered their mother, it all was a bit too fresh. Interesting how old habits get ingrained so deeply, then they become more than habits, they become part of who we are, what we're shaped from and it shows nicely in all of them.

We enjoyed our day here, had a cookout, swam, did the usual list and we topped it all off with a fresh strawberry pie. Coleman and I are about to call it a day and I'm listening to him talk to God - he's asking Him to help us be closer to Him. His faith truly leaves me speechless. I read something about that today...can't quite remember what it was, but it said something like if we are striving to do the right thing and ask something of God, that it will be heard and acted upon. I sometimes feel like I'm eavesdropping on their personal conversation and I know Coleman is being heard.