A Memorial

These are my parents circa World War II in Washington D.C. He's in uniform; she's not.

According to Tom Brokaw, they were part of the greatest generation. I won't argue. They were a generation who served; we are a generation who protested. During my youth, I listened to stories about the war years, but those years seemed long ago and far away. After all, at school we never did get up to the 20th century in our history books. Every year on a sunny day, my mother would hang out my dad's uniform on the clothes line and air out the old memories. Eventually their memories became my memories.

My dad died in 1995. Thereafter, on Memorial Day weekends, we would go to the cemetery up on the hill outside the small town where he grew up. The veterans' organizations had been there before us and planted flags next to the graves of the service men and women. We planted flowers. Sometimes my mother would yank them out later in the summer because she had her own ideas of tombstone decor. She hated geraniums and day lilies. Too messy, maybe. At any rate, I always teased her that she would have no say about which flowers I planted on her grave.

My mother died two years ago, and now I live too far away to bring her flowers.

And speaking of far away, thoughts from the next generation:

http://www.juliryan.blogspot.com/