Decoration Day

Autumnal Equinox

“Life starts over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

We lumber, single file, to the top of the hill in the old cemetery, dragging buckets of clippers, hand rakes, garden gloves and nippers--my parents, grandmother, great aunts and uncles, my sister, Jerrie, and me. My great-uncle Jim brings up the rear with a push mower. This is the first day of Autumn, 1955, and the trees are beginning to lose their summer greens. Lyda and Bess go immediately to their sister Carrie's grave, not yet holding a headstone. They silently begin removing leaves and clipping the sparse grass by hand, not wanting to disturb her peace with the mower. The graves of my dearly departed relatives cover the hillside. My favorite headstone belongs to my daddy's baby brother, Tom Lee, who died from pneumonia when he was eleven months old. His marble gravestone, carved by my great-uncle, Tom Alston, has a little lamb on top. We clean up the entire area, mow the thick grass, and place fresh flowers from Lyda and Bess' garden on each grave. Looking down the hill, we see other people doing the same—this is Decoration Day, which happens at the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes. My family makes a special trip to Murphy at this time every year as a kind of pilgrimage to honor the ancestors.

Today is the Autumnal Equinox, 2017. The sun will pass directly over the equator at 4:02 this afternoon. The word “Equinox,” is Latin, meaning “equal night.” Today we will have equal hours of daylight and darkness, and from now until the Winter Solstice, on December 21^st, our daylight hours will be fewer. The Autumnal equinox has traditionally been a day of feasts and celebrations; a time to celebrate nature, the harvest and to honor the dead. There are some old-time Southern churches that still observe Decoration Day, in fact, my own church will have a garden work-day tomorrow, since we don't have a church cemetery.

I don't know about you, but I love autumn. It holds special magic for me. When the leaves adorn themselves in yellow, orange and red, and begin to cover the ground in a festival of color, I come alive in a "crisp" new way. I am far away from my family's graves today, but if I were there, I would go and pay tribute to the folks who gave me life, and set me on the path of soul.

                                                 In the Spirit,

                                                      Jane