Joseph Mackereth
I don’t know about you, but I was raised by a Southern woman. Southern women have rules. Lots of them. The rules range from how one uses a spoon to eat soup to family obligations that are sacrosanct. To this day whenever I eat a bowl of soup, I hear my mother’s voice say, “All the little boats go out to sea.” That means that you pushed your spoon away from you to fill it (out to sea) so you didn’t splash it on yourself.
One of the must-do rules was that every May, we went ‘round to the cemeteries where the family was buried and cleaned the graves to get ready for Memorial Day. That means that we went to three different cemeteries in central Virginia, our trunk loaded with supplies to clean the grave stones, plant flowers and put out tiny, fresh American flags.
While cleaning things has never really excited me, I got to pick one small thing to leave for each family member. If they’d served in the military, and we’ve had people serve from the Revolutionary War through the Korean War, they got a flag. You must honor the veterans on Memorial Day.
I chose more personal items for the others. My great-uncle Caldwell always got a small apple on his tombstone. He built his own cedar coffin and kept it under his bed filled with apples as food storage through the winter. We are a practical people. Even though I was little, I would leave small gifts for my family, even if it was just a pretty rock that I had found, while Mama scrubbed the headstones and told me stories about the person whose grave we were tidying up.
Here’s where I learned that one of my relatives was known as “The Duelist” within the family. Turns out he owned a popular tavern just after the Revolutionary War ended and one of his patrons came in talking trash about politics. My man threw him out of his place and ended up getting challenged to a duel. They met at dawn, and my relative was shot and killed. Not much of a reputation as a duelist if you lost your only duel. Good story, though. I always tried to find a four-leaf clover to leave with him because it seemed to me, he needed luck more than anything else.
My great-great-great uncle Darius was an absolute rogue who was captured at Gettysburg then traded in a prisoner-of-war exchange. He had charmed several young women into selling their jewelry or horses to fund his shenanigans, then left them high and dry. The scoundrel gene seems prevalent among the male members of my family. Go figure.
Both my grandmothers were college graduates and loved teaching. I’d leave them pencils. One of my grandfathers always had a pipe in his mouth, so he’d get a smidgen of tobacco. I felt really connected to people even if I’d never met them. These were my people. This was my family.
Of course, a Southern woman could not gussy up a family member’s grave and leave the one next to it unloved. We ended up tidying up nearby graves and making up stories about the people there. Imagination would run wild as we would wonder about the lives of these strangers. What did they do for a living? Why did they die in their twenties? Were they as much of a rascal as some of our relatives? Who loved them? Who forgot them?
Have a lovely Memorial Day. Remember your veterans. Remember your scoundrels. Remember your family. Remember your friends. Remember your angels.
The story above first appeared in our May/June 2021 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!