Memorial Day was called Decoration Day in Kentucky when I was growing up. Every family gathered at the family cemetery to "decorate" graves with flowers hurriedly cut from yards and gardens. Tradition demanded that we visit and eat picnic lunches under the shady trees. We laughed and hugged those aunts and uncles and cousins we saw too rarely and remembered those who were no longer sitting beneath the tress, but now lay close by under the soft green grass. It was the graves still covered only in the raw looking red clay dirt that brought the deepest sorrow. The passing of time had no healing work done in us yet.

I visited my family's cemetery last fall. It is at the top of a hill, nearly inaccessible to us "city" folk. The dirt and gravel road is steep, and I have often felt safer getting out to walk up or down. The tombstones and markers tell a family history that I wish I knew better. I have experienced such a brief part of this epic story. There are so many buried there I do not know. The ones who are so dear to me seem absent. I cannot feel them there. I know they have gone on home ahead of me, and I will see them there...in God's time, and on his schedule.

I wonder now about heaven, perhaps because years have accumulated and I am growing closer to making my home there. I trust in Jesus. Recently I was asked in a survey which famous person in the history of all time I would most like to meet...can you guess?