May 26, 2014

     Memorial Day is an interesting day.  I have so much respect for the families who go together to honor their ancestors.  Jim and I were able to take floral arrangements to his father's grave and my parents'.  Doing so always reminds us of them and moments in our lives together.

     There is a silly tradition in my family.  Years ago, my mother starting putting plastic pink flamingos in our yard.  I hated them and was embarrassed, so I would hide them.  She would find them and drag them back out.  When my parents moved, I informed Mom that she should not take the pink flamingos.  When I came back from school for a visit, she had duck decoys decorating the lawn as a joke.

 From then on, the flamingo became a family joke.  They have appeared on my cake for my engagement, my doorstep, and in all sizes and styles.  Once, a six foot stuffed one appeared on her porch.  Of course I was blamed, but it was someone else in the family.  So, when Mom died, I put a pink flamingo on her grave.  Since it is a grave without raised headstones, I fully expected that it would not stay.  But it has.  For months, whoever cares for that area of the cemetery has carefully returned the flamingo to her side.  Then when we did the Temple work for Mom and Dad, I put another flamingo on his side so that the two beaks and necks formed a heart.  

  That flamingo was gone when we went on Memorial Day, but the original flamingo is still there.  It is always a little sweet memory when I see it.