The pots are ready

That’s what we’ve always called them – pots. I guess florists and greenhouses refer to Memorial Day flowers by some other name, although it escapes me at this time. Mother’s pot, Daddy’s pot, Grandpa Shimp’s pot and Grandma Shimp’s and Auntie’s.

I think calling them pots is related to getting the actual container, sticking your fingers in the dirt and putting in geraniums and spikes and some sort off ivy or fern go together. Pots and black soil . . . and doing it because your heart asks you too. I don’t think of the dead people lying beneath the stones; I see in my mind those people doing the potting thing in years past and me following along, helping (or getting in the way). I even remember the sensory aspects of the times we did it – the nearness of Grandma’s starched and ironed house dress, the coarseness of the dirt on the work table’s surface, the smell of geraniums, the heat of the sun as we toted pots from car to grave, the silence as we stepped back and looked at the flowers by the gravestones.