Peace and Planting

I have been taking these vacation days slow.  I'm not rushing. I work in the yard or the house without the panic of having to get something done. If I want to nap, I do.  If  I want to sit on the porch and just think, I do.  It has only been a week and three days, but it seems a lot longer.  Maybe it's the rushing I normally do that makes the days fly by.  Taking time tends to savor the day. 

So, last Sunday my daughter and I took some flowers and went to where my mom is buried. It is a two and a half  hour drive up north.  I love the drive. I love the talking and laughing we do.  It is our tradtion to stop at McDonald's when we get there to pick up grilled chicken sandwiches and iced tea to have a picnic with my mom.  That was the lunch she liked when we would be out shopping.  The cemetary is welcoming, if you can say that about a cemetary.  It is old and a lot like a community of sorts. My mom is up on a hill, near her parents and grandparent and other realtives.  Across the winding road from her, are more family members and relatives.  Scattered all around are the names of people I remember my grandmother telling stories about.  She grew up with these people and now she rests with them.  We spread out a blanket next to my mom and look out across at all of the stones marking someone's life.  After saying a prayer we eat our lunch. We talk about my mom, and grandmother. I point out the neighbors I remember hearing about. I laughed the first time I realized that the one family my grandmother didn't seem to like much, is now about seven feet away from her.  I'm hoping their disagreements are forgotten by now. 

The cemetary is old, with beautiful huge oak trees scattered about.  It is boardered by woods all around.  Some stones are so old the names are almost brushed away by the years of wind, snow and rain.  Others are fairly new.  When we first started going up there, I bought flowers to plant at my mom's and grandmother's grave.  As we've been going and 'getting aquainted' with the 'neighbors' I noticed that some appeared 'forgotten'.  Maybe their realtives were no longer here.  Moved away. Forgotten in the business of life.  Whatever the reason, some stones were flowerless.  So, my daughter and I began making a note of one more, and then one more, until we now go up with a flat or two of flowers and remember my mother and grandmother along with a few more. The neighborhood is blooming.  I like it.  I feel good when we leave seeing the fresh flowers, imagining what they will look like in the early fall when we go back up to plant the bulbs for the spring. 

It was a peaceful day.  I don't want to say uneventful, because just being up there with my daughter sober and in good spirits is a big event.  There wasn't any negative and that was the uneventful event.