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Rosedale & Doniphan Cemetaries Memorial Day Ceremony 2014 This is Rev. Kelly Karges, Senior Pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church, Grand Island, NE. And this is my video Journeys article. I pulled out the Memorial Day speech I was asked to give at the Rosedale and Doniphan Cemeteries in 2014: “Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for two weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated. It’s hard to imagine the huge risk those newly released slaves took – to do this thing. I lived in Charleston for five years and there are some who still call it the war of Northern aggression. This Memorial weekend has become about proving that we haven’t forgotten. We need to do what we can to prove to those that served in our military that we have not forgotten their sacrifice. Not forgetting is how we honor them. In our lifetimes there were 405,399 U.S. military deaths in World War II. 38,516 in the Korean War. 58,209 in the Vietnam War. 6,717 in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars so far. We have a friend from our Beatrice church who went into the military late. We was a successful teacher and coach. Now he’s a paratrooper, serving his second tour in Afghanistan. Jered Salazar is my friend on Facebook and he’s recently posted that he’d like us to not forget his friend Corporal Burnside – who was killed by an IED. There are still US Military being killed in service to our country as we speak. This weekend is also about remembering our loved ones who’ve passed away. So, we buy grave markers made of stone and steel for our loved ones to prove the permanence of our memories of who they were and what they meant to us. My Dad’s grave marker is on a wall at the columbarium at Christ UMC in Lincoln. Our son Luke’s grave marker is at Rose Hill Cemetery just south of Albion Nebraska. This weekend we need to visit and tend to the last places we saw the remains of our loved ones who’ve passed away to prove we haven’t forgotten them. We take care of that little outdoor space as a continuation of what we did for them while they were alive. We continue our caring for them even though they are no longer able to reciprocate. Even though it is one-sided, the relationship goes on. We’re doing our part. It helps somehow. We do battle with wire hangers and sculpt flower foam and pick out just the right flowers, (plastic and otherwise), as a gift to the memories of our loved ones who no longer walk this earth. Memory is a strange thing. Especially when its attached to grief. Cause our emotions play such a big part in our ability to remember. And when we lose a loved one, we get scared and we want to hold on to everything we can. But it’s hard. Our emotions get in the way. Cause how to you hold on to a laugh? How do you not loose that look they had in their eye when they teased you? How do you keep what it felt like to have one you love smile like they did when they were really happy? Sometimes, the harder you try and clutch it, the faster it goes away. You want to maintain what they meant to you. So you keep things. My Dad died a year ago in January. And I’ve got some of his bibles that he used when he was pastor here. I sit in his office and preach in the churches that were built while he was here. Sometimes it helps to have something to hold on to. I always tell folks that if their loved one didn’t mean anything to them, they would not cry. Our grief, our pain, is tied to how much our loved one meant to us. Our grief keeps their meaning fresh in our hearts – even if that means we have to suffer to get there. In our sadness, its easy to panic when we can’t pull up a memory. We start to worry that that memory is lost forever. It’s not. Its just that we have to come up with a new way to pull that memory up. Grief and memory, memory and honor. Not forgetting, maintaining a memory – can be a way to honor one we’ve known and loved. When those who have served their country in the military die while serving, it becomes important for the community to remember them . To remember together. It honors their service to their country – their community; their giving themselves to protect their loved ones. Cause see, they do not fight for themselves only. They fight for each other, and they fight to protect those that they love. So honoring them is a community thing and a personal thing at the same time. Cause I don’t think anyone enters the Marines, Army, Air Force, Navy or Coast Guard thinking they are going to die. But they enter knowing that death is a possibility. It’s like 2 % of their thinking. The other 98% is with something else. But that 2% is a giving over – a gift to us. I don’t know about you, but my earliest memories of Memorial Day are of loading up the car with hand held grass trimmers, a watering can, flowers, hangers, wire cutters and pots. My brother Casey, Mom, Grandma Karges and me would head up the hill to the Albion Cemetery. My little brother and I would go play in the great dirt pile by the shed at the back. Mom and Grandma would go to work. Then we’d pile back into the station wagon and drive to St. Edward, pick up my Grandma Clark and head up the hill to their cemetery and repeat the whole process again. In later years, the Memorial Weekend cemetery tour would include Scotia, and Greeley, where my Grandma’s Karges’s relatives were buried. It became an annual pilgrimage. As Pastor at graveside internment services, I like to talk about how the grave is just a place. A place for us. It’s the last place we saw the remains of our loved one. We know that their spirit, their essence is with God. But this place is for us, to take care of, to come and talk to them, to talk to God. It allows us to keep a thread of the relationship we’d had with them alive, by taking care of their place of rest. It’s really just a small piece of grass, a little cement foundation, a rock with a name and date. But its our grass, our rock, and keeping the weeds from creeping around the foundation is what I can do right now to express my continued love and caring. It keeps the memory alive. The grief that’s always a part of that memory seems to ebb and flow in it’s intensity. But making sure that space is cared for does something for me. It helps with that. I’m not sure how. The older I get, the harder it is to remember. It seems like there is only so much room in my brain, and it randomly dumps excess images and feelings to make room for today’s entries. May God bless our grave tendings this weekend. May they help us hook and hold our precious memories of those we can no longer hug and hold and love like we used to. Grace & Peace, Rev. Kelly