The cemetery was up on a hill there in Shelton Laurel. Most burial grounds were in places not really suitable for gardens or crops. On a hillside or at the crest of a hill, and usually, they were fenced in with barbed wire cause they were part of a pasture. Some places made it hard on pallbearers cause you couldn’t get very close to the graves. One good part of that was that the preacher would be winded from climbing up there and so he would be “short-winded.”
Anyway, every year usually around Memorial Day, folks had a “decoration day.” Lots of times, menfolk would go to the cemetery on Saturday or so and clean up the cemetery, cut weeds, remove limbs, fix the fence, and cut the grass. Great pride was in place to make the cemetery neat and cleaned up. Now decoration means just that. Folk come and bring flowers and memories, and they visit and talk and remember loved ones gone on. There is a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. Usually, there are some baby graves. Lots of babies died at childbirth or shortly thereafter because of a lack of medical knowledge and the in-home deliveries. My grandmother, Annie Burris, was a midwife, and I’ve often wondered how many babies she saved and how many died. Doctors were in short supply and most couldn’t afford one anyway. Anyways, after the decorations were done, usually someone led in singing some old-time gospel songs – always “Amazing Grace” and “Shall We Gather at the River.” Then, usually a preacher but not always, would preach. If no preacher was there, someone would always speak. It was family time and a mountain tradition that still goes on today, though not near as much.
Everyone had their own memories or heartaches to reminisce about. My mom had her own memories that were kept pretty much inside for 80 years. She was put out of the home when just a little girl because of the size of the family or because of the demands of a new woman in her dad’s life. There simply was not enough room, so the story goes. Anyways, for Mom, it was forgiveness and reconciliation even though he was long dead. We went up the hill and she sat in a chair and talked to him, then she got down on her knees and cleaned up the grave and put flowers on it. Then she was ready to go – either home or to Heaven.
The old cemeteries can be a place of remembrance and healing. How do we forget those who have given us so many good reasons to remember them? I wish my mom had made that trip to Shelton Laurel many years earlier. Surely keeping feelings of hurt inside takes a huge toll. I usually carry a grudge for a while. I want to get even. But one thing dropping dead in your backyard can do is help change attitudes about some things. I said to myself, Lord, I don’t know why my heart started beating again, but I reckon you ain’t through with me, and I don’t know what you want from me, but I made a change to be more loving to all people, to try and let go of grudges if I was wronged, and to look daily for ways to help someone else. All three happen; not every day, but the chances and reasons come.
I love my Mama, who died not long after letting go of those feelings. She was a mountain woman and knew what switches was for—and she used them with gusto—but she loved me, and I cried when I saw her on her knees talking to her dad in that cemetery. We don’t do Decoration Day here in Statesville, but I take flowers occasionally and put them on my first wife’s grave and on my two sons’ graves. I know I should have been a better man, and a better husband, and a better father. I am always saddened for a spell, and then I think of the good years, and there are so many, and I am blessed. Maybe He left me here to put flowers on those graves… Man, I wish I could go back to that other time when Mom insisted I be cleaned up and my hair all combed in place, and we were on the hilltop singing “Amazing Grace.” Remembering and respecting those who have paid their dues and gone on…Decoration Day.
