MEMORIAL DAY 2024…a la Kelly Kash! (my grandfather)

In 1944, I was about four, two years before my grandma, Dora, of Dear Kiss, had a stroke which left her  paralyzed  on her left side .She was in her seventies, wearing high heels and a pretty flowered dress, my mother Lena the same. In May of 1944, all were unaware that on June 6th, there would be the largest amphibious landing ever undertaken. I leave that fact to be examined and thought about, added to information all Americans should know about  and more than just acquire as a  school subject , but really know.   As an aside on the other side of the country, though not involved in this evet, two members of my mother’s family were serving, one in the army, the other in the navy. 

In that time and place, on  Decoration Day, as we called it, I’m sure my mother  would have gathered flowers from our yard, peonies and iris, yellow, deep purple, lavender edged with white and pale apricot, carefully wrapping the long stems in dampened newspaper, for the fifteen minute ,ride to the  Ogden City Cemetery.  We had baskets used just for that purpose each year, and jars weighted with stones, all set in place after we staked out our parking area close to our family’s plot. Back then there was a charming gate house, to my eyes like a play house. It is gone now, so the plot location is more of a challenge since I haven’t been there since we laid my dad to rest in 1978, then my mother in 1995. 

We would find our way each year and referencing 1944 again particularly, I believe my dad had been released from the Marines at news of his older brother’s early death at age fifty. He was the only family member buried at an   Ogden mausoleum a few miles to the south. As we walked, my parents placed the flower arrangements, only later did I know how many family members rested there, parents of my paternal grandmother, and even her parents who had moved to Utah .Uncles and aunts, eventually an aunt, not related by blood but delivered by my great grandmother at the  end of the nineteenth, the duty   was followed into my teen years, and beyond. After my father died in 1978, my mother attended to the family’s needs the next year and probably after I moved away in 1961. One tribute is to this service she performed for her husband’s family, while a thousand miles to the east in a small cemetery, Oakdale in Estill county, Irvine, Kentucky, her family remembered their family members passing,  year after year, and decorated as she continued to do in Ogden Utah for her husband’s family. 

In 1944, I imagine that  my grandma, a widow for thirty seven years ,still mourned her handsome young husband who died at thirty eight, in 1907. Though I didn’t observe it , my dad must have mourned the dad he never knew. 

The only time I remember being at the Kentucky cemetery was in 1955, when we buried my mother’s father Kelly Kash. Coincidentally a few months later, my grandma died in Ogden and her graveside was particularly  marked that year. And forty years later in 1995, we buried my mother, Lena. Two pink  headstones were  chosen by me, one for her, the other for my grandma. My father, David, had never been able to perform that final duty. 

1944, I  don’t know why I hit on that year  but so much had gone before and so much would soon be changed nationally and internationally. Being four at such a favored time, so safe and protected, when  so many four year olds the world over were gone or living in such desperate situations. Memorial Day is a day of thanks giving as well, to show great sensitivity to other’s  griefs and challenges, and place the flowers, if only figuratively, each year, noting for a time. the fragrance, and  the color.