Remember our Dead on Memorial Day

SEE THAT MY GRAVE IS KEPT CLEAN


Today I  watched an hour long concert by that great deceased Bluesman BB KING. He sang a mournful song that was written by Blind Lemon Jefferson "See that my grave is kept clean."

"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"

Well, there's one kind favor I'll ask of you
One kind favor I'll ask of you
Oh, there's one kind favor I'll ask of you
See that my grave is kept clean

There's two white horses in a line
Two white horses in a line
Two white horses in a line
Gonna take me to my burying ground

Well, my heart stopped beating
My hands are cold
Well, my heart stopped beating
And my hands are cold
Well, my heart stopped beating
And my hands are cold
I believe just what the Bible told

Did you ever hear a coffin sound?
Did you ever hear a coffin sound?
Did you ever hear a coffin sound?
Then you know that the poor boy's in the ground

Dig my grave with a silver spade
Well, you dig my grave with a silver spade
Dig my grave with a silver spade
Let me down the golden chain

Have you ever heard the church bell tone?
Ever heard the church bell tone?
Did you ever hear a church bell tone?
Then you know that the poor boy's dead and gone

I feel so good

One kind favor I'll ask of you
One kind favor I'll ask of you
It's one kind favor I'll ask of you
Please see that my grave is kept clean

Blues lyrics build on the repetition of  three, and they gain force and meaning in the hands of a master Blues artist  with each repetition.

This Memorial Day weekend  I visited and decorated the graves of my loved ones in three different cemeteries.  Every one of them had a lovely gravitas, and yet each was very different from the other.

I began my day with a trip to HOME DEPOT where  we bought 5 large  red geraniums. Our first stop was  the Mowry Family cemetery on Dexter Street in Cumberland.  The stone wall that once proudly acted  as a retaining wall is disintegrating.  Not due to natural causes--the wall has not collapsed--there are no stones lying about. It is gradually being dismantled by thieves who think, I guess, that the stones would look better on their property line.  But there is still a grassy dirt road the leads in and makes a wide U- turn, circumnavigates the three sides of the burial ground. This weekend of Memorial Day and the  need to flag Veteran's graves has pushed the town to cut the grass and clear and level the dirt road so that it was easy to drive in and access the old family burial ground.

I went there to decorate the graves of  my grandmother Ida Mowry and her mother Polly Brown. My Aunt Grace had taken me to those graves several times each year since childhood and when she was staying with me in the summer of her death, she asked me to promise to continue to  visit and decorate their graves. So I did, and I felt the warmth of her smile as I  saw the brilliant red flowers contrast with the white  marble stones.

Next stop was very nearby--Mount Calvary Cemetery on Curran Road.There I looked for and found the Coleman stone under the huge canopy of a spreading Oak. My mother Margaret, my Aunt Anna and my uncle Jimmy and my sisters Janie and Sheila are all buried there alongside my mother's parents Joe Coleman and Jane Conlon Coleman-- a long way from their  native Ireland and the shores of Lough Neagh. 
I  recalled  how Anna would go up and down the aisles of the grave stones, and as she knew so many, she would comment and wonder aloud why no one cared any longer to decorate their graves.
So I knew she would be watching and waiting for the two large geraniums to be placed in the side hangers that she had always kept filled with flowers real or artificial. I felt a weight had lifted when I saw the results of our work and the relief of Anna's approval.

We now continued North up Diamond Hill Road to the Woonsocket landmark, Oak Hill Cemetery.  There as I turned in from Rathbun, I noticed the new saplings  growing in that forest preserve. What caught my eye was the Jenckes family plot which  marks the rising path and a turn in the road.  When we reached there and parked, I decided to place two geraniums here --one on the 1828  granite stone from the Jenckes  Mill and the other on the base of the main granite  monument  in the large plot. My father Norman  and my grandfather Oscar are the two people I  knew personally who are buried here. But this site also contains the paternal Jenckes line and some spouses dating back to Job Jenckes who started that first Jenckes  mill.
Oak Hill casts a spell.  Here on the higher ground the light is always so different from Pawtucket and the air  is tangy with scents of mown grass and late Spring. In my imagination  I picture lilacs massed  at the gatehouse and a line of blooming fragrant cherries  lining the path from the entrance to the Civil War Cannon. 

After I say prayers  for the souls of all who are buried there, I recall the promise I made to my very co-operative husband. We head back to Diamond Hill Road and a first stop of the season at the DREAM MACHINE for the best ice cream money can buy. 
He usually  wants ginger but this day he picks PISTACHIO.