Memorial Day 2012

Highland Park Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. Every year people put thousands of flags out and a few days take them all down. It's worth seeing if you are driving down Chagrin Blvd.
God Bless our veterans.  Thank you to each one.

We Remember

Memorial Day 2010

American Deaths:
Iraq - 4,404
Afghanistan - 996
Persian Gulf - 382
Vietnam - 58,209
Korean - 36,574
WWII - 405,399
WWI - 116,516

622,480 too many.

A Potter's Field

As we were coming home last night from dinner, my husband suddenly pulled into a drive that we'd both been past hundreds of times. We'd heard about it, but never gone in. It is the Potter's Field for the City of Cleveland. The only thing to see is this memorial stone. There were a few plastic flowers and a makeshift wooden cross at its base.

I looked it up and discovered that it was established in 1904 for poor, homeless and unclaimed bodies. Older graves marked by wooden crosses have disappeared over the years, so it is just a lot of grassy area surrounded by trees. A peaceful resting place. It is part of Highland Park Cemetery in Highland Hills, but the records are kept by Cleveland.

It makes you wonder how many people rest there - and why? It makes you think how blessed you are if there are people in your life who love and care about you - who will miss you when you're gone.

Here lies the body of a man who died

Nobody mourned, nobody cried

How he lived, how he fared

Nobody knows, nobody cared.

John Starkwether

More Memorial Day Weekend

The beauty a surprise every spring.

My new swan planter.

I painted the bocce court yesterday and my back is remembering today.

Half the pile gone, half to go!

Memorial Day weekend is a time for homeowners to get the mulch down, rake out the leftover leaves of last fall from the gardens, paint decks, drag out hammocks and chairs - but in our hearts we're saying "thank you" to our veterans, old and young, with a prayer that someday there will be no more new veterans to thank.

Memorial Day

This is just a tiny section of the veterans area of Highland Park Cemetery in Cleveland. There is a flag for every veteran's gravemarker every Memorial Day.