Decoration Day

My mother’s family faithfully observed Decoration Day at Montford Cove Baptist Church Cemetery.

“Mama cut some of her May roses to take to the graves at Montford’s Cove on Decoration Day,” my mother often said, and then described the abundant rosebushes her mama grew in her yard. I imagined my grandmother gathering the prettiest blooms for her family’s graves.

Montford Cove community, where my mother’s family originally lived, is a 30 minute drive into the country from my hometown, Marion, North Carolina. Montford Cove Baptist Church is located just over the Rutherford County line. I remember as a young child playing among the graves on Decoration Day at that church cemetery. That special day in May is an occasion when church members and families of those buried in the churchyard come together to clean and decorate graves and hold a dinner on the grounds.

When I started driving, my mother asked me to take her to the cemetery to see her family’s graves. So on a Sunday afternoon, we drove to the church.  I carried my camera along and took pictures of Confederate graves that were scattered throughout the churchyard. My mother’s mama and daddy and some siblings were buried here, as were her maternal and paternal grandparents—Ledfords and Davises—along with other kin. Lichen-stained, chipped, and leaning, the oldest family stones dated from the nineteenth century, their epitaphs barely legible.

While we stood at her sister Ruby’s grave, my mother said, “I wish I could be here with my family someday.” She knew that she and my father had already secured plots at the newer Memorial Park in Marion, where they are now laid to rest.

“It is a pretty place,” I said as I surveyed the peaceful hillside in the rural community—a pristine landscape of cornfields, pastures, and farmhouses.

On another May afternoon, she and I went to the churchyard, and it happened to be Decoration Day. We realized this only after we noticed people placing flowers on graves and saw others gathered down below the brick church, setting their covered dishes on long tables.

“Come and eat with us,” a woman said. We hesitated and apologized for not bringing food, but she insisted, so we joined the food line.

“I hate to eat when we’ve not brought anything,” my mother confided to me.

“We didn’t know we were going to have dinner here,” I said. “But they invited us, so it’s okay.” We filled our plates and sat alongside the others, sharing their meal.

Through the years, I continued to drive my mother to the cemetery at Montford Cove to visit family graves. But in time, the trudge up the uneven grassy slope grew too difficult for her to maneuver, so we stopped going. But occasionally she said, “I wish I could take flowers to Mama’s grave.”

“I’ll take them,” I said. “You can sit in the car while I put them on the grave.” This idea didn’t seem to satisfy her, so we didn’t go. But her youngest brother, John Ray, began to take care of the family graves, scrubbing the stones and placing flowers there on Decoration Day. He continued this, keeping my mother and me updated on the condition of the graves, until his death in 2022.

I have read that Decoration Day is a Southern tradition, perhaps being the inspiration for Memorial Day. It’s a day of remembering and reconnecting with earlier generations—a way to honor the dead.

My last trip to Montford Cove Baptist Church Cemetery was with my brother, Steve, in mid-March 2022. We traversed the sprawling churchyard and took pictures. We noticed Christmas flowers, red and white poinsettias, dotting the landscape. I regretted I hadn’t brought spring flowers to decorate our family’s graves.

“Mother once told me she wished she could be here with her family someday,” I said, as Steve and I stood at our grandparents’ gravestone. We lingered for a while, reminiscing about the past. And I remembered the time, 60 years before, when I played among the graves on a sunny day in May.