Decoration Day>Memorial Day>Any Day

Since I was born in the forties, my relatives all called the last day in May, Decoration Day. Decoration Day was when all family members gathered in my family if at all possible to take flowers to the cemetery to decorate all graves, just not the veterans in our family. It was not even mentioned to me as a very young child that there was an option to not go to the cemetery. Shopping for just the right flowers was imperative. My mother seemed to know the appropriate flowers for each person. As I got older my mother and sister settled on imitation peonies to decorate with. My parents' car trunk would be full of the beautiful flowers. These along with the real plants that were permanently established at their resting places were always attended.
My mother was a fanatic about the grave sites being weedless and spotless. There was no need for that because the caretakers of our cemetery tended to them with loving care, it seemed. It just showed how much she cared.
I have ancestors that were veterans; one fought in the Revolutionary War, also in the Civil War. My brother is a veteran and will one day be buried along with his wife in that same cemetery even though they have lived in other states for years; Cherokee is home.
My great grandparents, my grandparents, and parents and a sister are all buried there as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, and a variety of folks that if they were not blood relatives, were considered our family.
I always smiled to myself when Mom would invariable say, "I just can't remember how to get to Mom's stone." Ha! She knew exactly how to get there.
When we were at the cemetery we would visit about the folks that were buried there. It seemed that inevitably I would learn something about my relatives at Oak Hill Cemetery. Mom would tell little stories, or shake her head in wonder at how they had survived such hardships in helping to settle the little town of Cherokee, Iowa so many years before.
She would be sad, of course. Never has there been a mother or will there be that has lost a child, spouse, parent or any loved one without being sad who had a  heart that was soft and full of love like my mother's.

This grave stone is for my mother's brother Leslie A. Banister and my Aunt Marcella. He was the oldest WWll Veteran in Cherokee
County, Iowa when he passed away in April 2018
This grave stone is in Aurelia, Iowa.

My little family, yes, would have a get together, and visit, and laugh. However, the meaning of Decoration Day was to remember, not only the sacrifices that our family veterans had made, but to honor those that had gone before us, paving the way. From their sod houses, to our beautiful homes. To their fighting Indians, to our fighting traffic. Their love of family and love of community still holds strong in the little cemetery where my family will be fondly remembered by many.
So Decoration Day, Memorial Day, Any Day that's when we honor all of our loved ones. No need to quibble about what the day is called; again that's my opinion.

My father, Ray A. Johnson my five year old sister Juanita E. Johnson and my mother, Gladys Z. Banister, Johnson, Hackney.
I put the peonies there in September when I was in Cherokee. My brother sent me this photo this afternoon.