It wasn't until tonight that the chords of my own life began to sound in resonance with the ignominious deaths of those lost souls. It wasn't until tonight that my childhood memories of Memorial Days spent watching parades while playing with paper poppies passed out by the Women's Auxiliary of something or other came creeping out the closet again. In those days, Memorial Day was Decoration Day, and the parades were followed by the obligatory trip to the cemetery to seek out our ancestors, the fallen soldier, or in my case, my baby sisters. It was during those annual sojourns that I learned their stories and committed them to memory.
As an adult, I made a trip back to my roots to unearth the reasons for my troubled childhood. During that trip, I made a pilgrimage to Mary Jean's grave, in a location far removed from the more modern, tidier memorial gardens. Several years later when my father died, I was part of a larger contingent that went to the cemetery where he would be buried along side his parents. That time, I went in search of Kathy June's grave, located along side the road that looped around the Beckwith section of the historical graveyard.
Until tonight, each time I thought about the neglected resting places of all of the lost and forgotten souls, I thought about them within the context of my professional passion. Tonight, while updating the website about my book, my thoughts unearthed the place where my professional passion intersects with the wounded heart of my youth. Because of this, I won't be watching any parades on this year's Memorial Day or playing with any paper poppies. This year I'll going to make another trip to those old family graveyards to place some real flowers on my both of my sisters' unmarked graves.
