Memorial Day at the cemetery

Hi everyone,

We decorated family graves in Maple Park Cemetery yesterday, cleaned the headstones, placed new artificial flowers, paused briefly to think our thoughts about those loved ones who have gone on. Sandy’s parents are there. So are mine. My dad’s mother and father are there. Mom’s mother, sister, brother-in-law (my Uncle Wayne) are there, as well as her brother and his wife. The headstone that always makes me shake my head in wonder is the one for Dad’s parents.

My grandfather Harrison was born in 1855, probably in England. His family migrated to Canada and moved from there to Bad Ax, Michigan where Granddad eventually became a veterinarian. As a young adult, he moved to Missouri, where he met and married Anna Webb, and made her my grandmother. Dr. Harrison opened the first veterinary hospital in Springfield and died in 1920, when his little boy, my father, was 9 years old, 17 years before I was born. (I hope that’s a hat and not my granny’s hair.)

I stand at his graveside and marvel at the timespan of his life. He was born six years before the Civil War started. He lived through the cowboy era of roughly 1866 to 1889. He lived when the railroads made it all the way to the west coast, during the gold rush, the industrial revolution, the invention of the Bell telephone. and went on living well into the 20th century. What stories we have missed!

All I have of my grandfather’s are his glasses, his pocket watch, and a textbook from his veterinarian school.

One time, a few years ago, I dared to hold the watch and wind it, just a turn or two, holding my breath that I wouldn’t break it. At once, it began to tick! I held it to my ear, as my grandfather had done so long ago. I had made a sort of contact with the man I never knew but who gave me my dad. Tears of great joy came.