Decoration Day

I snipped and placed each flower in a bucket of shallow water, branches of sweet-smelling lilac, stalks of yellow iris and purple iris, a few early roses, bachelor buttons, and lots of Jupiter’s Beard (Centranthus ruber). It grew behind my Grandmother’s house like a weed, and could always be counted upon to bloom in time for what we called Decoration Day, the 30th day of May. I don’t know how it happened… perhaps because I was the eldest child… but I was the designated flower picker for the bouquets that would later be placed on my father’s grave and those of my Grandfather’s sisters.

Although Memorial Day was first proclaimed in 1868 to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War, and after World War I was expanded to include those who died in any war or military action, I don’t remember connecting it with wars and soldiers. It was just the day that my family drove to Eugene’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to clean and decorate the graves. It became a family reunion – of the living and the dead – as we greeted other relatives who had come to honor their own loved ones. Grandma, Grandpa, younger sisters, and mom and dad, aunts and uncles, we worked together pulling weeds, and scrubbing the gravestones. Mason jars were filled with water and all the flowers I had picked earlier were transferred to them from the bucket and placed on the various graves. We sat among the dead, remembering them in life; sharing with them the sun, the fresh green grass, flowers that bloom, and the legacy of the living. I grew up thinking of cemeteries as a friendly place, not a place to fear… and with the knowledge that death is as natural as life.

Congress made the day into a three-day weekend with the National Holiday Act of 1971, and people seem to have forgotten the spirit of Memorial Day’s traditional day of observance. As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

Sadly I found Laurel Hill Cemetery listed on an “Endangered Cemetery Report.” With more than 2,000 graves, the report gives the condition of the cemetery as “neglected” and rarely visited; gravestones overturned, broken, stolen, desecrated, and tagged with graffiti. “The historic cemetery (established in 1852) is in very bad condition back in the older sections and the "Pauper Field". If you hike back into the overgrown areas, the graves are sunken and headstones are missing. This cemetery is overseen by the IOOF, a fast-dying organization with the average age of member past 70. This historic cemetery needs help! The last major clean-up was in 1973 by the City of Springfield to honor pioneer families.”

… P. L. Morningstar