The First Saturday in August

I came home from the cemetery this afternoon with my heart still on the mountain. Every first Saturday in August, families from my little community of Spillcorn, located in Marshall, North Carolina, gather to decorate the graves of those who came before us. It has been part of our lives for as long as anyone can remember. My grandparents made that walk. My mother made it for most of her life. Today, I carried flowers to her grave.

People are often surprised when I tell them our Decoration Day isn't held in the spring. Most communities observe it around Memorial Day, yet ours has always been the first Saturday in August.

I spent a good part of today walking through Roberts Cemetery, stopping at one grave after another, thinking about the people whose lives made mine possible. My mother rests there now. So do my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors. Some of the names belong to people I knew well. Others belong to relatives whose stories were handed down long before I was born. Every one of them is part of my family's story, and every first Saturday in August we return to remember them. Many of the people in this image below are the ones who I pay respect to on this day.

Decoration Day has deep roots in American history. After the Civil War, communities began gathering to place flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers. In 1868, General John A. Logan called for a national day to decorate those graves, a tradition that eventually became Memorial Day. Across Appalachia, however, many churches and communities held tightly to an older mountain custom. Rather than gathering only to remember veterans, families chose one day each year to decorate every grave in the cemetery. Some communities met in May, others in June or July. Here in Spillcorn, it has always been the first Saturday in August.

I never thought much about that history when I was a boy.

To me, Decoration Day meant seeing family.

It meant cousins coming from different places I rarely visited. It meant hugs that lasted longer because another year had slipped away. It meant hearing stories that somehow never grew old, even after I had heard them dozens of times. Someone would point toward a headstone and begin talking about a grandfather who could spit farther than anyone around or an aunt who always had biscuits waiting on the table. Before long, another story would begin, and another, until an afternoon had passed almost unnoticed.

As children, we wandered through the cemetery while the grown-ups talked. Every so often someone would call us over and point to another name carved in stone.

"That's your great-grandmother."

"Your great-uncle rests over there."

"Don't ever forget where your family came from."

At the time, I probably didn't understand how important those moments were. But Lord do I know now. I realize those walks through that mountain cemetery taught me more about my family than any history book ever could.

The years have changed my place in those gatherings.

There was a time when I walked beside my mother while she carried flowers for her parents. I watched her stop at each grave, straighten a bouquet, brush away a few blades of grass, and stand there for a while before moving on. She never hurried. Every stop carried a memory, and every memory carried someone's name.

Now I find myself following the same path she once walked.

The flowers I carried today were for her.

That is one of the hardest parts of growing older. The people who once taught us these traditions slowly become the ones we have come to remember. I still catch myself wanting to ask Mama a question about someone in the cemetery or wondering if she remembers where a distant cousin is buried. Then I remember she is already there, resting among the people she loved all her life.

There is a tenderness to Decoration Day that is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it.

It is not a day filled only with sadness.

There are tears from time to time, especially when someone visits a fresh grave for the first time. There is laughter as well. Old stories are told again. Children play among the wide stretches of green grass, unaware that they are becoming part of a tradition that has lasted for many years. Teenagers who would rather be somewhere else still show up because their parents brought them, much as mine once did. Someday they will understand why.

I hope they never stop coming.

Traditions like this survive because someone decides they are worth keeping alive.

Decoration Day asks only one thing of us. Come home. Bring flowers. Spend time with your family. Remember the people whose names are carved into those headstones, because they are the reason we are here.

As I stood in the cemetery today, I looked across the hillside and saw flowers resting beside graves that have been visited every August for decades. I thought about all the people who had stood there before me. My grandparents once stood where I stood. Their parents stood there before them. Long after I am gone, I hope someone from our family will still make that climb carrying flowers in their hands.

Some traditions deserve to outlive us.

For me, Decoration Day has never been about flowers alone.

The flowers will eventually fade. Summer will give way to autumn, autumn to winter, and another year will pass. What remains is the promise we make by returning. We remember names that might otherwise be forgotten. We tell stories that might otherwise disappear. We remind the youngest members of our family that they belong to something much larger than themselves.

As I drove away from the cemetery this afternoon, I looked back one last time at the hillside above my little community of Spillcorn. The cemetery was covered in green grass, bright flowers rested beside the headstones, and families gathered before making their way home.

Today, I honored my mother and oh, how I miss her every day, yet there is comfort in knowing that every first Saturday in August I will return to that hillside, carrying flowers and carrying memories. As long as I am able, I will keep making that trip. One day I hope another generation will do the same, telling stories about those who came before them, pointing to names on the headstones, and teaching children that love does not end when someone leaves this world.

In my little corner of Appalachia, Decoration Day has never been another date on the calendar.

It has always been a homecoming.