Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

For anyone who has read my column over the years, you undoubtedly know that Memorial Day is by far my favorite holiday. Ever since I was a wee lad, old enough to hang out in the back window of the Plymouth Fury III while Grandma barreled down gravel roads as speeds that would make a rum runner blush, I’ve found a peace and not so silent appreciation for Memorial Day.

You will find me driving this weekend slowly from one country cemetery to the next with the flowers I’ve collected out of the garden, my sack of rags and jugs of water, taking time to visit family and friends from long ago. The small amount of time that I get to spend with them in those resting places brings me peace and the simple task of taking the time to pull the grass from around the stones, wash the headstones down or just sit and talk for a minute with them, in some small way is my way of saying that I haven’t forgotten about them, or the path which they lead which allowed me the opportunity to have this life.

It’s often in these times that I spend with them, that I wonder about their lives when they stood at my same age. What were their joys? What were their worries? Did they still hold onto a dream, or were they just simply trying to survive from day to day?

What an interesting gift it would be to spend a moment asking them those questions and I wonder what answers it would provide to my own search for the truth and the purpose behind my life. I’m sure they would have a little wisdom to impart upon me, but I’m also sure that there message to me would be just to live life to the fullest every day.

I think about that message often when I walk amongst the dead. When I stop to read the names and dates, it makes me wonder if they lived their life to the fullest. Did they have the chance to do that, and did they take that chance at every opportunity?

Take some time this weekend from your picnics, and the camping, and ballgames to spend a little time with old family and friends….stop and show them you remember, give them just a little of your time, and while you are there, wander over to some forgotten grave that seems a little lonely. Bend down on your knees and pull the grass away. Wash the stone so that it’s clean, and whisper in your own way, “Hello friend. I don’t know you, but you aren’t forgotten.”

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.