Memorial Day means a lot of things to a lot of people. According to Wikipedia, the holiday was originally called Decoration Day. In 1971, Congress officially made the last Monday in May as the official date and changed the name to Memorial Day. It is supposed to be day of remembering those soldiers whose lives were lost in battle. For many people, it is the official beginning of summer and for several years, the School Board of Polk County actually made the school calendar so that school was OVER by Memorial Day. I love the fact that my little town puts up a huge flag on City Hall, and puts flags around Lake Stella. I have family and friends who have served and are serving in the military and Memorial Day is a good day to remember and thank those people.
For my family, Memorial Day means something a little different. In 2001, we held our mom's funeral on Memorial Day. That may seem kind of weird to some people, but it worked for us. That year, we were done with school by then, students had actually finished two Fridays before (on the 18th) and teachers had either two or three workdays the next week. My mom had her heart attack on Monday and we told the doctor to turn off the stupid machines on Wednesday. Because she died in another county, there was something weird with that and we had to wait for a while. We decided to do the viewing and funeral back to back and now, other people have done the same thing – we started a trend! Memorial Day for me will always be a day of remembering my mom.
My mom was born second of five children. She was not a healthy child – she spent most of her life until age 10 off and on in the hospital. She had an underdeveloped lung and she got sick a lot. When she was 10, the doctors removed the underdeveloped part of her lung and she was much better after that. She was a tiny little thing – her goal in high school was to weigh 90 pounds. She wasn't even 5 feet tall and a size two shoe was too big most often. She graduated from high school in June of 1961 and married my dad in August of 1961. My sister Robyn was born in June of 1962. When she married my dad, he worked for US Sugar, and could have worked there forever. Little did she know he would be called into the ministry and end up a pastor. They had been married for a week the first time he invited someone home for dinner with no warning to her. He never stopped doing that.
My mom was a feisty little thing. I think sometimes people underestimated her and tried to take advantage of her. She was not one to cross and it made her furious if someone wronged someone she cared for. She was happiest when she had a houseful of people to fuss over and cook for. She was a great cook, a hard worker and a great mom. I think she really worried about always doing the right thing – my grandmother told me that before my sister Robyn was born, my mom read every book she could find on how to raise a child and be a good mom. She was smart – she could have done anything she wanted. She had a scholarship to go to college and gave it up to marry my dad and have us. When I started kindergarten, she went to work. She worked in a bra factory for a while and then started business college. She graduated from business college with a 3 point something grade point average, with three children, a house, a job and a husband. That's why when I started at FSU, my goal was to have at least the same GPA she did, since all I had was a cat!
I don't remember ever seeing my mother sleep when I was little. She made all of our clothes, stretched the tiny bit of money we had to feed us all, and managed to keep us all safe and in one piece. We went to elementary school at Dixieland Elementary in Lakeland, and we had a carnival every year. She worked the cotton candy machine one year and because she was so short, she ended up COVERED in cotton candy. It took multiple showers for her to get all the sugar off her.
My mom and dad were married for nearly 40 years. Their first date was to the beach after the prom. Their last day together was at the beach. They were a great team. Somehow, they fit each other perfectly. My sister and I were lucky enough to have parents that loved each other and loved us – and we knew it.
I thank God every day that I was lucky enough to be born in the US. I know that I am lucky to live in the United States, with the largest volunteer armed force in the world. And I know that Memorial Day is the day we remember them. But for me, Memorial Day is also one of the days I remember my mom – and how blessed I am to have had her.
