Monday morning, he would wake me up and I would roll groggily out of bed or off of the couch and in to the car.  We would listen to Billy Joel's Stormfront album, or Barton & Sweeny, and head north on I-44.  A road I rarely traveled.  We'd stop at the station on the turnpike at the then world's largest McDonald's and pick up some Mt. Dew, some laffy taffy, and some flowers.

Always the flowers.

About the time we reached the exit on 44, he would start telling me about his memories of this place.  What it was like to be there.  What his father was like before I knew him.  He sold RVs.  Sometimes well, sometimes not.  He was a hard man.  But there was love in him, if you knew where to look.  He would tell me about his mother.   Her life in the lucid and not-so-lucid times.  He would tell me bits of her incredible fantasies that simply could not be made up.  Then we would slowly pass the old house, and he would tell me about the cellar.  The harder times and the happier times.  He would tell me what he never wanted me to feel, and what he wanted me to always feel.

Finally, we would make our way to the small cemetery.  I remember it well.  Tree lined gravel road leading up to the small chain link fence (always well-kept) and then the plots, next to one another, just a little ways off the road.  Paul and Roberta LaBouff.  He would tell me of Grandpa's involvement in WWII.  He was in the Normandy Invasion.  Third wave.  Cleanup.  While he'd never speak of it, it was obvious that it was more than formative for him.  We'd lay the flowers.  Then take a moment, and wander on.

We would spend several minutes looking over the stones of the Bump family (his mother's unfortunate maiden name.)  He would explain how they were related, where their offspring might be, and when he had seen them last.  We would always take extra time at Marty's stone though.  Marty was more brother than cousin.  I always knew that he Marty's death had marked him more deeply than he'd ever really admit to himself.  I think it showed him a path that could have been his.  Thank God it wasn't.  

All the while people would be coming and going, probably the same people every year, though we never acknowledged one another.  Laying flags, flowers, telling their own stories.  Finally, we'd get back in the car, "not start the fire" for the 3,000th time, and head home.

It was always just us, Dad and me.  Those Memorial Day trips are some of the most interesting childhood memories I have because they taught me so much.  They taught me a lot about my father.  But through the stories about my grandpa they taught me about sacrifice.  About how honor, no matter how great, can absolutely scar a man.  About how there may be no price too great to pay for a worthy cause.  They taught me that the love of a family is sometimes tenuous, but nearly indestructible at its core, for even the darkest of memories carried with them a kind of reverence...

Those trips taught me why we celebrate this day.  They taught me what kind of man my father is, and ultimately, what kind of man I am.  I miss those shady oaks and that worn out cassette.  I miss the man under that stone too, his boots that I would cling to as we shuffled off to Shoney's or the arcade.

But most of all, I miss going to visit the graves of people that I have not had to bury.  Tomorrow, I'll attend the funeral of an honored friend and veteran.  On Wednesday, I'll attend another veteran's funeral.  A veteran of America's wars and Baylor's: Herbert H. Reynolds.  The unexpected deaths of these men and others are leading me to do things in my own life to try to prevent them.  I'll write more about that in the future.

Tonight, I just want to say thank you to those who serve.  Know that even when you feel you're not recognized, someone is thinking of those shady oaks and the flowers.  Always the flowers.