Ten Dollars of Plastic Flowers and a Dilly Bar: Memorial Day with Mom

For six or seven years, I've had a tradition with my mom of bringing flowers to our family gravesites every Memorial Day. It's a chance for us to connect, chat about the past, and really take a trip down figurative and literal memory lane.

The new feature last year is that my mom moved from senior living to assisted living close to my house. It's been very nice for everyone's peace of mind, but being the most able person in your apartment complex isn't always the most incredible feeling, and that's been weighing on her. As we depart, I know she is glad to leave her gorgeous apartment and the kind staff behind for a few hours with the promise of a nap and dinner when she returns.

Before we get too far down the road, we realize we still need flowers to adorn said family gravesites. I quickly agree with Mom that Dollar General in Dresser is the best place to find them because, quite literally, I am my mother's son. She tells me to grab ten dollars or so of flowers. I chuckle as I run to Dollar General, grabbing what I thought were ten plastic flowers resembling daisies and some wispy, white stuff that's in bouquets.

I apologize to florists; this is not a post about being an expert in floristry. Please forgive me. I grabbed some of that and other things to look pretty, if only for a moment, if only for us. To my surprise, a bouquet of ten dollars worth of flowers comes up to $8.44—the first of many Memorial Day miracles.

From there, we begin our drive north, up 35, towards one of the most busy tourist highways Western Wisconsin has to offer: Highway 8. In six short miles, it truly is an exercise in attention to the road and not getting captivated by the gorgeous nature you see as it passes, although I recommend stopping at the flea market in season.

We head through the St. Croix Falls Highway 8 area, and traffic levels off slightly as we head north of Amery and over towards the idyllic thousand-person town of Turtle Lake, with a casino nestled in the center. It's across the street from a still-standing Super Value, which my aunt managed for a few decades.

As we pass through Turtle Lake, we go through the third roundabout and take a slight right to go up north to Highway 63, the passage many people take to the Northeast. I'm glad to be going north on this Memorial Day. I see what we can colloquially refer to as "mud ducks" heading towards us—their tourism dollars returning safely to Minnesota before they visit again. I'm thankful I'm heading against the flow, and I know I will be getting more creative as I head back.

We drive into Cumberland and make a short rest stop for my mom at the gas station. I pretend to be interested in the sausage and cheese as I wait by the bathroom door, realizing it is too heavy for my mom to open and close on her own while navigating with a walker. When she's done, we head back on the road through the Island City of Cumberland and over to the Section 10 Cemetery, a country cemetery that is open and right on the road.

Here, we reach my Grandma Helen's site and think of her. She was my classic Grandma, who gave me Werther's Originals and Bugles and taught me to love The Price is Right in the mid-morning and shore fishing in July. Though she was not blood, she was dear.

Her grave is under two pines, right on 10th Street next to her family, the Thompsons, in a nice setting in a place that seems foregone somehow, even though I only live 45 minutes away. As we place the plastic flowers by my Grandma's grave, next to some others that her nieces and nephews must have left, I stop for a moment to think about the good times and also those last few hard years because aging, as we all know, is not easy.

As we drive towards Clayton and some county roads, which I expertly chose so we did not have to swim through the sea of "mud ducks," we talk about how, at this time of year, soul meets body in the foliage and explodes out in a green crescendo. That new life is interesting to think about on Memorial Day.

I ponder that as we drive to the Silver Creek Lutheran Cemetery, the site of my first and last time eating lutefisk in a church basement, and the gravesites of Grandpa Clarence, Grandma Ida, and Uncle Jimmy. My Uncle Jimmy picked the adjoining grave for Grandpa Clarence and Grandma Ida, and my Uncle Dane wrote a poem carved in the stone between the gravesites. It's a moving portrait of family, and I can't help but read the years on everyone's grave and start to do some mental math.

I get back in the car with my mother, who still seems to be a gorgeous 87 years old, and we head back to the last part of our journey to Amery to visit the site of my father, my grandparents on his side, and my sister, Nancy, who died as a baby. Those gravesites are wonderful and located in the heart of my hometown.

As we left, my mom mentioned Dairy Queen, I realized that I'm going to take one for the team, have a Dilly Bar, and have a follow-up tummy ache.

I go into the Dairy Queen and contemplate how it's also a reminiscence of a before, a small connection with the past. It's at that point that my Dilly Bar explodes in my hand when I open the plastic. No problem; I'll eat it fast—fast enough for my tummy ache to take hold right away.

My mom enjoys hers, and it makes me happy that she talks about other times she's enjoyed ice cream throughout her life. And that's what the day is about: that memory, that hope. It's a ride down memory lane to say goodbye and also just say hello for a moment to the happy memories, in a realization of the future. It's a fine time.

Amen.