NOTES ON MEMORIAL DAY

 As I grew up, Memorial Day was an important tradition in my family. In those days, Memorial Day (or Decoration Day, as some still called it) occurred on May 31. The change to the last Monday in May went into effect in 1971 in accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968. When I was married in 1975, it didn’t occur to me that our chosen date fell on Memorial Day weekend, and to this day, I would rather observe it on May 31.

Nina & Charlie Portfors

Our family tradition started with my Portfors grandparents. Grandma Nina’s family (Stinsons and Sanders) were interred at the Burnt Ridge Cemetery outside of Troy, Idaho, so Grandma and Grandpa would fill the trunk of his Lincoln with washtubs and buckets of flowers and large cans to serve as vases. They stopped at Aunt Hattie Stinson’s house in Troy (Grandma’s aunt by marriage), loaded her flowers, and the three of them went on to the cemetery where they blended their floral offerings into bouquets for the various graves. Afterwards, they would share a midday meal.

Nina Saunders Portfors 1886-1955

When Grandma Portfors died in 1955, my mother stepped in to help Grandpa continue the tradition of cemetery decorating, and naturally, she took me along. We always had plenty of flowers from our yard as well as Grandpa’s, and my dad would make a trip to the farm where the season was at least two weeks behind town and bring back even more flowers. We made bouquets with iris, lilacs, roses, peonies, poet daffodils, coralbells, bleeding heart, etc. It was always fun to see how those bouquets would turn out.

As the years went on, Mother added more cemeteries to her list and gathered more family members into the plan. It seemed complicated to me, but nothing was too much trouble for Mother if she wanted to do it. Besides the Burnt Ridge Cemetery, we decorated graves at the Normal Hill Cemetery in Lewiston and the Riverside Cemetery in Orofino. Later, she visited Grangeville and Cavendish. We did not regularly visit the Gilbert Cemetery near the farm where my dad’s family is buried, and ironically, this is now the only cemetery I visit and only if it fits our schedule. And I use (and re-use) artificial flowers because I don’t have enough flowers in my yard.

Will I take it more seriously now that Milo’s memorial is at the Gilbert Cemetery? Frankly, I doubt it, but I bought a cemetery vase with spike for his grave with the thought that it would be nice to place live flowers this year. I made two bouquets with iris, bridal veil spirea, and lilacs – one for Milo’s grave and one for my dad’s, which Mike and I delivered on Friday (May 23). And while I was there, I placed artificial flowers on other family graves as long as I could tolerate the stooping.

Even back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, fewer flowers were available on Memorial Day, so Mother planted cemetery boxes. You have to plant those early so that the plants mature, fill the box, and bloom. Mother was good at it, but it’s a labor of love that I didn’t take up.

Decorations placed on any grave signify remembrance, but I especially love to see flowers at an old grave. It means that a life lived long ago is still lovingly remembered. Mike observes that I’m the major decorator at the Gilbert Cemetery. KW