As a child going to school, Memorial Day meant three more weeks of school before the freedom of summer vacation and the freedom it brought to spend my time doing things I wanted rather than things I was required to do. In the last decade or two, Memorial Day weekend (and, of course, now it is a weekend) is much more somber than it used to be. Each year, more and more of the people I know have left us, and I find myself to be the matriarch of my family.
I never knew my grandmothers. One died in Poland during WWII; the other died here just before WWII and I grew up visiting her grave with my mother. I lost my first grandfather at 16 and my second and most beloved grandfather ten days before my 18th birthday. There were some great aunts and uncles left - most of them I knew only barely (We were not a close knit Polish family), but for me, the oldest generation was gone.
The second generation started to pass on when I was 24 and expecting my first child. My uncle died of a heart attack at the age of 52. Every few years after that, another relative would leave this earth. Death and dying is part of everyone's family. When my children were 8 and 5, we lost my father-in-law to cancer. Losing the first parent is always hard. It propels you into a different world of responsibility. We realized that with him gone, my mother-in-law would have only us (My husband was her only child), and as she had few friends and didn't drive, we soon realized that the only way to properly look after her was to move her into our home, where she stayed for the next 22 years.
My husband and I have now been married 42 years and the last of our relatives from the generation above us passed away in December. She was a cousin of my father's whose daughter is approximately seven hours younger than I am. Now, the generation above my husband and I is gone in our families. Parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins of that generation have all bid farewell to their families and their lives. Some have left generations to follow. Others have not. They are the ends of their respective lines.
As my husband and I go around to grave sites tomorrow, we will be sadly reminded that we are the next generation departing. We have already lost classmates and friends - all too young in this day and age of advanced medical care and early diagnosis. We open the obituary page of our local newspaper gingerly each day wondering which familiar name we will see next. As with more and more people of our generation, we see the end of the line. While we have two children, we have no grandchildren, and we see none in the future. We are starting to think we need to make some arrangements for family pictures, documents, and meaningful items, so that they don't end up in a landfill or yard sale somewhere.
The world is changing. Big families are harder to find. Having children does not necessarily mean grandchildren will follow. For some of us the mourners will be few or even none. So on this Memorial Day weekend, the most important thing for us to remember is that while those love have gone from us and left our lives emptier, we need to fill those empty spaces with full days and new experiences to the level that our finances and bodies will allow. Time passes and it is fleeting.
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