When I was little, it was our custom to spend Memorial Day at our old family cemetery on the edge of Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Far from being elegant or elite, it was a triangle of threadbare grass wedged between a pot-holed county road and the neighbors’ pasture, from which farm animals would stray through the barbwire fence onto hallowed ground.

But it was surrounded by towering unkempt lilacs, shading the lichen-sprinkled headstones. Even on a hot day, it was cool inside the fragrant fort planted around Ed and Saria Alton — and their children, who grew old and in death rejoined their ma and pa in the rocky glacial dirt.

Ed lived well beyond the end of the Civil War, but it probably was the war that killed him in the end. Neither Union nor Confederate prisoner of war camps were humane, but as the South itself starved in the midst of Union blockades and destruction, Union prisoners starved even worse. Great-great-grandpa never really recovered from his months as a POW on Belle Island near Richmond, Virginia.

In the way of kids, it always made me uncomfortable to step anywhere beyond the invisible line marking the boundaries of what might be a casket of an ancestor. My superstition or good manners didn’t keep me from leaping over great-great grandpa’s grave, but I wouldn’t step on him. Still wouldn’t, as a matter of fact.

Memorial Day gives us a chance to reforge our links in the chain that brought us life. It’s too bad, in a way, that all our traditional holidays have been institutionalized into three-day holiday weekends. For too many of us, what should be a time to pause and remember departed loved ones by investing some sweat-equity in their cemetery plots has turned into mere time off.

But for some at least, Memorial Day still is a time to honor the dead, especially those who lost their lives in defense of our freedom. This Memorial Day, reach out to your loved ones, those who have passed and those still with you. We’re all here such a little while, and then gone forever.

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