My Grandfather Taylor called Memorial Day, Decoration Day. He, like most of his generation, visited local cemetaries where relatives were buried, taking flowers and checking on the condition of the graves. Rural cemeteries in north Missouri like Owasco, Bute, Baker, and Mt. Zion.

Although my grandfather probably had never heard of Simone Weil, he would have understood her assertion that one of the great needs for modern life was for Roots. Modernity cuts one off from the roots of family, place, and nature. Decoration Day reaffirmed Roots past, and Roots present. (Various relatives dropped by the house as they visited cemeteries, or were encounted among the graves as they laid flowers. Neighbors too.)

This past week I visited these cemeteries with my father: Owasco with its abandoned church and view overlooking a small creek; Bute small on a ridge over a mile off the paved road; Baker, nearly twenty miles from any town with a population over 1000; and Mt. Zion, across the road from home, animals living under the decaying former church and peonies blooming among the graves. I stood at the graves of my mother, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and my great-great-grandparents. Numerous great and great-great aunts and uncles. The headstones in these small cemeteries gave evidence of community inter-relatedness through marriage over the last century-and-a-half. Birds sang and flowers bloomed.

I heard stories and history from my father, whose 80th birthday was a week ago. Once more I reconnected, with family, with the land, with my roots.

Don't let your children grow up rootless; don't be rootless yourself. Happy Memorial/Decoration Day.