This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. All the years I was growing up, it was called “Decoration Day” because the major purpose of the weekend was to visit the cemeteries and decorate the graves of departed relatives. Nina says that this practice is generally confined to the west and to the south. The northeast has parades and the veterans all dress up and march with bands and such. I don’t think I ever remember a parade on Decoration Day as I was growing up, but I do remember marching at least once in a parade while we were in Japan in the Air Force.

Today we took mom and dad to go to two cemeteries. We stopped first in the Lund Cemetery (just before the road goes up and over Fish Creek on the way from Soda Springs to Lava Hot Springs. My great uncle Les (Leslie Sydenham Gillett) is buried with his wife in that cemetery and there’s no one else in this area to do anything for his grave site on Memorial Day. We left a small pot of flowers at the base of their large headstone and then drove along the foothills past the Utah Power & Light dam, through Thatcher, and to the Cleveland Cemetery where the accompanying picture was taken. I’ve many dead relatives buried in that cemetery. Mom and dad are also planning to be buried in the Cleveland Cemetery, have their burial plots bought and paid for, and have the headstone already in place. Their headstone is in the center foreground in the picture. Their birth dates and marriage date are on the headstone, but no death dates. Last year when they went over to the cemetery, which was shortly after the headstone had been put in place, they found that someone had decorated their future grave site! This year, there were no flowers on their gravesite when we arrived. We did leave a small potted plant before we left. Nina said it was so they could see how pretty it would be! The Cleveland Cemetery is a nice cemetery. It’s small, up on a hill overlooking the valley, and is very quiet. It’s a nice place to visit on Memorial Day and to remember ancestors who led the way here through mortality. I was happy we were able to be there.