Cemeteries

[memories evoked by the Sunday Scribblings prompt, "Goosebumps"]

Do you ever get an unexpected shiver, apparently for no reason? When that happened to me, I remember my grandma telling me "someone must be walking on your grave." I always thought that was creepy. Do graveyards give you goosebumps? I can't say that they do for me, although I know some folks have more trouble with the idea of being around them.

When I was a girl scout, we would do overnight camping at the local girl scout property on the lake. It was next to a cemetery, so inevitably we would sing spooky songs. It was on a girl scout camping trip that I first did rubbings of the art on the old gravestones. I had never done that before and really liked that method of remembering artwork. The charcoal rubbings always came out with so much more detail than the snapshots from our little cheap cameras.

I remember helping my grandma and great aunt get ready for Decoration Day. That was what they used to call Memorial Day. Most years, I was out of school for the summer already, and for days ahead, we'd gather together glass and metal vases. Then we'd sort out and make arrangements of artificial flowers. Then we'd plan which flowers would need to be picked on the morning we would go to the grave sites. Some folks got whatever was in bloom, some got roses. When the bouquets were ready, we'd put them in boxes in the trunk or back seat of the car and head out to the cemeteries. I remember visiting 3 of them.

The closest cemetery was at the edge of town. It was quite large, and backed up to the country club on one side. It was well-manicured and had winding roads through it. Most of the headstones were quite modern.

The next cemetery we visited had a lot of family in it. It was out past the small town where my grandma had been born, kind of stuck in between the fields. You went through the little-bitty town, turn left at the next corner, down and up and right at the next road, then a left turn going sharply uphill into the cemetery. It had a lot of older stones, though nothing was elaborate. The folks buried there were, for the most part, farmers and their families, and there wasn't a lot of extra money to spend on fancy headstones.

I don't remember exactly where the 3rd cemetery was, it is possible I fell asleep on the way. I do remember it was not as well cared-for. It was on a little hilltop in the middle of more fields and there was a little walking uphill to get to the graves we visited.

I do remember that my great aunt took special care to put the fresh-cut roses on the grave of her sister (my great-aunt Lucy who died just after I was born). She told me that Lucy hated artificial flowers. When Lucy was dying she said she'd come back as a ghost and sit on the bed of the anyone who put artificial flowers on her grave. My living relatives didn't want to tempt fate (or Lucy, I guess).

The American Legion in my hometown did something that had a great impact on Memorial Day (and Independence Day). When a military person dies, a flag is draped on their casket. The flag is folded and given to the family. Some families put these flags in cases for display, but many of them are tucked away and never taken out. The American Legion in my town offered to care for these flags in return for getting to use them. Each military flag was mounted on a wooden pole and the name, rank, and war of the deceased went on a metal plate affixed to that pole.

The American Legion put out the flags for special events and then would gather them up and make sure they were cleaned and properly cared for. The result of this is that the main streets, and the roads leading to and through the town cemetery are lined for Memorial Day with these flags. I remember walking along and looking at the name plates on the flags. Being a small town, if someone in the family didn't know the person whose name was on the flag, odds were that we knew a relative of that person. To see all those flags, each representing a real person from my small town over generations, was definitely enough to give me goosebumps.