Memorials

During a recent bike ride around the Square, I noticed the various memorials on the Courthouse lawn. There are memorials to Confederate veterans, a more general memorial to those killed in battle; there is even a memorial marking the fact the Murfreesboro was the state capital for eight years in the early 1800s.

Memorials are meant to preserve the memory of a person, place, or an event. However, I think memorials say more about the living than the deceased does. Memorials show what a society values and respects. I think it is telling that while there are innumerable memorials around this country dedicated to the fallen veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, there are very few memorials dedicated solely to the veterans of Vietnam or the first Persian Gulf War.

I do not believe that my generation is comfortable with memorials or remembering those who have come before us. We have fought illness and death so successfully that the remembrance of death is an uncomfortable reminder that we have not entirely defeated death. We do not take part in Decoration Day activities.

I remember going to countless Decoration Days as a child and teenager. My father’s family has two family cemeteries (the exclusive Watson Cemetery and the more inclusive Conaster Cemetery, both located in rural Wilson County, Tennessee). As my mother’s family did not boast its own cemetery, we would go to various country church Decoration Days in Moore County, Tennessee.

Decoration Day was not a somber affair. People would bring food to share and spread the picnic on the ground. No one thought it strange to feast on fried chicken and banana pudding while sitting amongst the tombstones. In fact, the tombstones would lead to interesting conversations of the people with whom we were eating. The children would play tag and other games, hopping neatly over the graves. There would be a brief prayer and placing of new wreaths on the graves.

As I grew older, though, I stopped going to Decoration Day. I stopped going to the ones on my father’s side because there was always too much family drama, and it was exhausting trying to remember who was mad at whom, and whom we were not to speak to at the event. I only stopped going to the Decoration Day at Buckeye (where my mother’s parents and sister are buried) after college, when life got in the way of my attending the event. Since moving back to Tennessee, nearly three years ago, I have not attended any Decoration Day events nor have I taken my children.

A part of me misses the feeling of familial kinship that comes with Decoration Day. Even though my father’s family never made me feel welcome, there was a nice feeling to walk amongst my ancestors and hear stories about them. I never knew many of them, but some of them became very real to me during these events. I also miss seeing distant relatives you only see once a year.

However, like many in my generation, I have not felt the need for Decoration Day. I do not remember my beloved grandparents or aunts the less because I do not visit their gravesites. I remember them in different ways. I tell my children stories of my grandparents, and show their pictures to them. I make some of their favorite recipes. I see my grandfather’s cheekbones whenever I see my Aunt Bobbie, and I see my grandmother looking out of my mother’s face. The memorials I have for these beloved relatives are not tangible, but they are no less real for their intangibility. Perhaps it is the same for others of my generation. We do not erect public memorials because we carry the memories of our loved ones within our very pores.