“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 810 (Saturday) – memorial day prep

It was a day of ancestral connections. It began with Finnish breakfast at Saima Park in the company of my cousin, Mom and Step Dad, and a friend and her brother and a sister-in-law. It was a nice visit with good food of my ancestral homeland.

After that, I met Mom and Step Dad at Forest Hill Cemetery and we planted flowers on family graves. I  remember being a kid and going with Mom and Mummu to decorate family graves. This is the sort of stuff I missed when I lived 1,200 miles away, and one of 10,000 reasons for moving back. And now Mummu’s is one of the graves we decorate.

My great-grandparents.

We started at Mummu’s, then went over to Aunt Julia and Uncle Pat’s; Aunt Mary and Uncle Clyde; Mom’s grandparents John and Wilhelmina; and John William and Lilja, two of Mummu’s siblings who died as young children. A second brother, John Emil, died at age 17, but we don’t know where he is buried, nor several other of Mummu's siblings who lived and died locally. 

There were several carloads of people in the same section of the cemetery doing the same thing as us, decorating family graves. It was hard work, as always. For some reason, the grass chooses to grow thick and dense up against the headstones, even when it is sparse and patchy just a few feet away, and even though we dig it out every year to put in flowers.

While standing at my great grandparent’s stone, I could feel the tears building while thinking about my own brother who died last summer. We still haven’t given ourselves closure with a memorial service or interment, and worse, we can’t even seem to talk about it. I looked over at Mom. There was a tear in her eye, and a look passed over her face like a cloud. It seemed that some feelings were happening with her, too. And then it was back to stoic for both of us. It’s how we roll.

Military graves on the hill.

I took the long way out and drove around the cemetery a little bit. The American flags were flying at the military graves atop the hill and the cemetery looked good. When I was in junior high and high school, my friends and I often met at the cemetery to sit on the wall at the stone entrance, or to walk or ride bikes on a one-mile loop that a friend’s parents had mapped out for running. 

When I started taking photography classes back in the last century, I spent a lot of time at the cemetery taking photos of interesting monuments. It was close to where I lived and the older monuments are beautiful sculptures. Cemeteries are peaceful green spaces and I can understand why people in the 1800s picnicked in them like parks.

In the cycle of life and back at home, there were baby birds in the nest over the drain pipe. There was noise and two little heads up with beaks open waiting for some food this afternoon. In a typical scenario, it was impossible to get a photo of  both of them.