05/27/2025
🌺For as long as I can remember, I’ve known one thing: when I die, my physical remains (or at least part of them) will be in a family cemetery in rural Franklin County, Illinois founded in 1870 by my paternal great-great-grandfather, R.D. Smith. Yesterday, I admired the surrounding trees and farmland, a fine place for the dust of my body to settle. Until I was grown, I didn’t think of it as an inheritance of sorts.
🌸When my parents moved far from their birthplaces, they sent a florist to mark family graves on Memorial Day. Twenty years ago, they retired a few miles as the crow flies from this family cemetery. Since then, they have visited, served as custodians, and decorated graves themselves until this year, when my mother admitted that she was too unstable on her feet to traverse the lawn. She gladly passed the torch to me and my brothers. For the first time, my brothers and I placed all the flowers where they belonged.
🌼My middle brother paused over four illegible graves, then pulled a knife from his pocket and gently scraped off lichen from their stones, uncovering the names of four of our great-great grandfather’s daughters. From eight months to seven years old, all four died between 1889 and 1890. I Googled 1889 history and learned a flu pandemic swept the world that year. It reminds me that our bodies may be worn from years of hard work, family genetics, lifestyle choices, and years of living, but we are blessed to have each other, Mom, Dad, and four siblings.
💐Reflecting a generational shift away from tradition, my brothers mutter under their breath about wasted effort and money, insisting they don’t want flowers on their graves. But they are buying tombstones next to mine and my parents’, preparing for the inevitable. After our demise, we wonder if our descendants will gather, as we do, for the annual American Legion service. Will they hear Taps echoing across the surrounding fields and feel their mortality?
