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| Filling Her Shoes. Photo Montage. 9x12" © by Ruth Zachary |
Decoration Day 1910
...every death diminishes us a little,
we grieve - not so
much for the death
as for ourselves. Lynn Caine
Sometimes it was
very cold in late May,
when everyone went to Evergreen
cemetery
for Decoration Day.
You had to stand around all
afternoon waiting
for the town orchestra to tune up
to play
marches and dirges and hymns, out
of tune.
Then the old ministers and
soldiers
would give long speeches.
Ava hated standing still.
She would go look at the graves
of the people in her family;
the Starrs, her mother’s grave,
and Grace’s.
She would wonder what it would be
like
if her mother had not died, but
it was hard
to imagine any life but the one
she had.
She would think of Grace
and wonder what dying was like
before and during her passage to
heaven.
As she would stand listening to
the out-of-tune band music
she would get itches under her
stockings.
In her bloomers where she
couldn’t scratch.
Ava hated the itch between her
shoulder blades
more than any of the others.
Her nice spring coat was too
thick
to scratch through.
Ava thought about the itches.
They had different feels... some
were light,
some soft, some bright, some dark
and deep.
Some were red, and screamed or
roared.
Itches had pitches.
She tried to make a tune from the
itches,
but the music of the band drowned
them out.
Everyone sang hymns together,
even the Baptists who were
sinners
and others who didn’t go to
church at all.
Catholics were buried in another
cemetery
west of Kingsley in Hannah.
They would all go to hell when
they died
because they did not follow the
Bible
as the Free Methodists did.
Ava thought about hellfire
when she was at church listening
to the preacher and when she was
at the cemetery or when someone
died.
She knew people went to heaven
if they were saved. Her own
mother Ruth
had visited her after she died,
and so she knew there was a
heaven.
She wouldn’t want to go to hell.
But she was still safe.
She was still only a little girl.
She was too innocent to go to
hell, Mamma
said, and she had until she was
twelve or so.
By the time the services were
over,
Ava was glad to go home. The
smell of lilacs
was best when they were in your
own yard,
or picked in big bouquets
and greeting you from the
upstairs
where her summer bedroom would
be.
Ava hoped the next time they
papered
her room that they could find
lilac wallpaper
and scent it with lilac water.
Stories told by Ava Babcock, and words recalled from conversations between relatives,as well as my own experiences there. Decoration Day was the name used by many people, for Memorial Day.
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