I wasn't going to do a post today until I got thinking about this. When I was a kid Memorial Day was always the day (besides Labor Day) when my mother got out our flag (we had a couple of large flags on poles with eagles on the tops than attached to the side of the house) and put it out and we would all (except my father) get into the car with some kind of flowers (if the lilacs in the back yard weren't in bloom yet we would get something else, if we didn't have anything it didn't matter, we went anyway) and we went up to the cemetery to see the graves of my grandparents and my Aunt Helen and then there would be a wandering about the cemetery to see if my mother could find anyone else related to us or that she knew.
One year we went to Hartford Ct. to a cemetery there to see if my father could find his relatives. He only found one and another that was just a possible relative but I will always remember their names.
This is not something that my children have been exposed to. We have no relatives buried close by and the flag hangs outside our house all the time since both my sons] joined the Army. Still I think it is a terrible shame that I have let this tradition die in our family.
Just another good thing gone. Sometimes I wonder about all the 'constants' we had in our life growing up from the same Christmas tree decorations, the same pies served for Thanksgiving to the same things we did for Memorial Day. These things we were proud of. What will OUR children remember?
Becky, I agree that preserving family and national traditions is important, and sometimes difficult to do. When I was a child people were less mobile, but these days people move around the world a lot more and cultures are more than ever mingled. For example: I'm British / English; I was born in Malaysia; one of my daughters was born in Germany; my younger daughter is married to a man from Panama, and they now live in France and work in Switzerland.
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