Memorial Day | Ft Richardson, Alaska

Memorial Day has never been sad to me. It was a long weekend that meant school was over and camping season had begun. It was a time to get the first sunburn of the year and celebrate long summer days to come. In college I remember going out with my grandparents to put flowers on the graves of relatives I had never met or who were just faint childhood memories. It wasn't sad to me. Cemeteries have never been a sad or scary place. I have always found them somehow fascinating. Each headstone had a mystery, a story that someone once told. It was tangible history that piqued my imagination.

This year was different. Memorial day was the perfect hot day that brought my first sunburn of the year. But that sunburn came while in a cemetery with several hundred other people. Some of them important, some of them sad, some were soldiers once, and some, like us, who were new to this tradition of honor and grief, but all of them to honor the brave men and women that served our country. I kept thinking how much Dad would have loved all of it. Even the somewhat humorous and anti-climactic fly-over by a lone DeHavilland Beaver. It made me miss him.

The flags and the bugles were some of my favorite memories of the day. Here are a few photos.