It dawned on me as we drove away from our town's cemetery this afternoon, that the older I get, the more places I can visit each Memorial Day. Today, we visited my parents's gravesite. But it wasn't the only gravesite we needed to visit today.
There's another one, a new one.
Almost every Memorial Day since 1974 I've gone to a certain spot in the Farmington City Cemetery, a little south and west of center. In 2008 the family gathered not just for the fallen patriarch, but our matriarch as well.
But because the only constant is change, our family now has a new destination to visit at our local cemetery, more south and more west, almost to the very corner of the cemetery itself. Last year, we had no reason to venture so far south and west. This year...well, it's a different story.
I don't know if it's weird, but I love seeing our cemetery on Memorial Day. There's beautiful flowers on most graves. There's pin wheels and balloons, American flags and stuffed animals. Those are the temporary things. The more permanent ones, the headstones and monuments, they'll eventually be gone, too. And, if things work out as planned, one day my wife and I will be part of the ecosystem as well, a little south and west of center.
Memorial Day at our cemetery is beautiful, for all the right reasons.
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