This is one of the tough times of the year for me personally.  My father was a WWII veteran, having served in the US Army Air Force in the European Theatre from about 1942 (stateside) until the end in 1945.  1944-1945 was served on a base in Norfolk England, Hethel to be precise.

Memorial Day as a kid was probably mostly picnics or planting flowers in the garden, as well as the day my parents were absolutely certain the long Michigan winters were over and it was time to swap out the storm windows on our screen doors and let the fresh air waft through the house.

On May 29, 1968, this changed for me forever.  My father collapsed the previous evening at home, rushed to the local hospital, and died in the small hours of the morning the following day–May 30, 1968.  It was almost eerie in my mind because I had been aware of the sudden death of another fairly young father, Martin Luther King Jr, barely two months earlier and like the death of John F. Kennedy 5 years before that, I felt sad for the other children over their loss of a parent.  And in less than two weeks after my father died, Robert Kennedy would be assassinated in California, leaving behind more small fatherless children.

It has been 48 years to the day (in 1968, Memorial Day was always the 30th of May before the switch to a roaming Monday national day), and here it is again.  My dad was 48 when he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; he has been a memory for a long as he was a living, breathing human being.  I was 10 years old at the time.

My memories of my dad have had to be enhanced by reading his letters, hearing stories his colleagues told, and from members of my own family who were older.  My mother has been a good resource although as she approaches her 91st birthday in a few months she has more ghostly memories of my dad than she once did.

I do recall my dad’s elder brother, Ed, who lived 97 years (luck of the draw?) and who told me once that my dad hated cemeteries.  He would rather see parks for children to play in.  Ironically, he is interred in one of the prettiest cemeteries I have seen, Oakwood in Sharon, PA, in one of the places that my Scottish great grandfather purchased for several graves a long time ago…before there was even a World War I, let alone a World War II.  Sorry, Daddy, your ashes are in a cemetery but I couldn’t ask for a nicer place.  I do wish I were closer to you, and again I am glad I am not because I don’t know if I could bear visiting that place very often.

Now that Uncle Ed is gone, I am not certain if anyone is looking after the giant stone urns my great grandfather or maybe my grandfather placed at the Murchie burial ground.  I have found some photos of them when Ed took pride in planting brightly colored flowers like geraniums.  But like the people there, they too are probably only a memory.

Forty-eight years ago, my life took a very sharp turn in a matter of hours, and I alternate between feeling numb to hearing the news about someone dying and crying inconsolably like the little girl I was back then.  The raging Vietnam war and the race riots of 1968, not to mention a controversial election year all at that same time, it seems like it is a bad memory coming back now.  I have continued to feel loss: of home, of stability, of cherished friends, of my beloved cats, of jobs that just don’t last long enough or pay enough to ride through the dark times.  I do have hope that this era of stress and loss and struggle will itself become a memory, albeit it will be one that I will work on forgetting.

People preach about “letting go” and I hear what they’re saying.  But one of the best books I have ever read was “The Loss that is Forever” about the loss of a parent to a young child, especially one who has yet to leave their parents’ protection.  You’re not ready to let go then, and it seems a pity to let go now.

And that is why we pause on Memorial Day.