Memorial Day

I wasn't deliberately trying to leave the news from the Daily News off the blog, I just couldn't figure out how to pick up the feed.

I will admit that, after the first attempt, I gave up and forgot all about it until today.

So goes my mind lately.

I've been so involved in our little garden plot in the New Eden Collaborative garden that all else is being pushed out of my head.

Anyway ... Here's hoping you all had a good holiday weekend and that you took the time to remember those lost, even if they weren't lost in a war.

I remember going every Memorial Day (although I think it was still called Decoration Day then) with my (Swart) grandfather to a small cemetery in Thetford Township (Clio, MI) to put flowers on the graves of his parents.

Their graves were not marked then. After my grandfather died, I was the only one who knew exactly where the graves were when my grandmother decided to put markers there.

The reason I'm even saying this is because I saw people, and talked to people, who took the time last weekend to go to the graves of family members and mark them with some kind of tribute.

It reminded me of those trips with my grandfather. I am only pointing out that he was my adopted grandfather because all of my blood relatives (the ones who are dead, at least) are buried in other countries.

My Swart grandparents, my Aunt Sylvia, Uncle Bud and Uncle Harold and my cousins Richard and Rudy are buried halfway across this country from me, but mostly close to one another.

Nevertheless, the meaning and spirit of the day was not lost on me.