Memorial Day to Me

Today is the traditional Memorial Day, the one that started on May 30 sometime in the late 1860s.  It was also called Decoration Day because the graves of those who gave their lives in war were decorated with flowers and flags. It stayed that way until Congress made Memorial Day a federal holiday and designated that it be celebrated on the last Monday in May. The next time it falls on the traditional date is 2022.

 Today is a different Memorial Day for me. On this day in 1940, Edmund Mocarski and Pearl Gasiorowski walked into St. Stanislaus Koskta church on Noble Avenue in Chicago, IL, for their wedding ceremony that led to 55 years of marriage, four children, 11 grandchildren, and 14 grandchildren.

Today would have been their 80th anniversary.

I honestly don't know what my Dad thought about the feds changing the date of Memorial Day. I sometimes think he liked the fact that whenever May 30 came around, he had a paid holiday to spend time with the woman he loved.

Their marriage was my example, one that I tried to follow in my life.  You know that whole, for better for worse, rich or poor, sickness and health stuff. That whole until death thing. I know they both believed that.

On May 30, 1990, Mom and Dad renewed their wedding vows. My father choked up getting the words out. It was, I think, the only time I ever saw him cry.

He was standing next to the only woman he ever loved, the love from the day they married that he still had in his mind.  The woman he was looking at in the picture below.

Usually Dad didn't sign the cards that came our way. He left that chore to Mom. But, a few months before their 50th, I know he was thinking of her when he wrote something in the birthday card they sent me. I know she loved him, too. She kept the words framed for the rest of her life.

Forever

My father wrote: "make a poem
for fifty years of wedded bliss."

That which started with a simple
look, perhaps a kiss, 
but not too soon,
blossomed as it should.

It grew ...
a strong brick bungalow,
an old neighborhood of values.
It sticks with me, here
inside, the way you taught.

She hums in her kitchen.
He watches tv.
They are as content
as on that day when vows
were serious things.

The years ...
of graduations and marriages,
of mending clothes and bruises.

... "Make a poem."
How can I?
You already have