Today is Memorial Day. This morning I drove up to Yeadon, a suburb of Philadelphia, to visit the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. I had not been back to the cemetery since Mom’s funeral in November 2012. Dad died in November 2010 a few weeks before my wife, Bedou, died. Today I wanted to go to the cemetery to see Mom and Dad. The sky was blue and bright with sunlight. I pulled into Fernwood Cemetery and drove slowly down the narrow roads that separate the sections. I parked along the side of the road and walked down the gentle slope toward the bottom of the section where the gravesite was. I stopped and scanned the rows of headstones trying to find Mom and Dad. The cemetery had placed American flags at the gravesite of each veteran buried here so I looked for a flag. Dad had served in the Seabees in the Pacific during World War II. I found the gravesite. I had only seen a picture of the newly carved headstone that now included Mom’s name and dates. It fit nicely on Dad’s official military headstone. They were together again as they had always been.
I thought for a long time about what Mom and Dad had done for us, for their family, friends and neighbors. They gave so much, loved so much, and shared so much with everyone around them. They showed me how to be a good parent, not directly, but by the way they were parents to my brothers and I. If I did well raising my kids, it is due in part to the way my parents raised me.
Today is Memorial Day. Thank you, Dad, for your service. Thank you Mom and Dad for being my parents.
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