While Memorial Day is a day to honor those who gave their lives during a conflict serving in the United States Military, Americans on this day also visit and decorate family graves….

When I was in my early teens, I loved to wander in a cemetery near my home in Brush Prairie. I enjoyed the sun-dappled place where I could read the names on tipped headstones more than a hundred years old. I wondered who these people were and what their lives had been like. On Father’s Day this year, Jim and I stopped by this cemetery to remember some special people.

First we stopped at Bill’s grave. I reflected on that man, gone nine years now. I traced my fingers over the words. An Extravagant Gesture of the Creator. “I wish I could have known him,” Jim said.

“You will, one day,” I reminded.

I looked at Carrie’s headstone next. Safe in the Arms of Jesus.

We walked north toward my parents’ gravesite. Dad’s headstone said, He Preached the Word. Mom’s said, She Taught the Word. I am grateful to my parents and their diligence to teach their children and others to love and follow Jesus Christ. Their lives were an example in which I never observed hypocrisy.

Writing my story, I’ve thought a lot about my parents and my past. How tenuous life is—even if we live to our nineties, as my mother did.

I don’t know the future but I know I can trust my Savior. He brought me through the very hard times I’ve experienced.

God is with me in the joyful times too. He is with me when I celebrate birthdays or anniversaries, when I travel with my Jim, when we have new adventures, and when we make love.

There are nigglings of fear that creep into my thoughts. What if Jim dies? Can I make it without his love and care?

We pray that God will grant us many years together but we know that our lives are truly in His hands, not ours. We can trust in the God who loves us more than we love each other or ourselves.

So we do just that. We trust.

And He’ll be there when He takes each of us home to Him.

From: Beyond Second Chances: Heartbreak to Joy, pages 173-174

The third stanza from a familiar song, America the Beautiful:

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!

America! America! May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness,  And every gain divine!

Katherine Lee Bates