Memorial Day 2026
I began my annual preparation for Memorial Day last week. For years, my parents planted the large iron urns at our family gravesite at Oakwood Cemetery. After Dad passed away twenty years ago, I helped my mother select and plant the flowers, usually red geraniums, spikes, and vinca. Mom died two years ago, and I am carrying on the tradition.
Every few years, the silver paint on the urn begins to peel and rust. This was one of those years. The wall of spray cans at the neighborhood hardware store is daunting until I remember or guess correctly: shiny, rust-proof silver. After wrapping an old sheet around the large rough cut gray granite stone inscribed with our family name PETERSON, I began brushing each planter with a wire brush. Then I sprayed them with the silver paint, being careful not to overdo it. Past experience has taught me that the glossy finish can quickly make them appear like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz .
It was a sunny afternoon, and people were walking along a path on the outside of the cemetery fence, many of them with dogs. A few other people were tending graves. I have come to think of the cemetery as a gathering place. My great-grandparents and husband are buried in another section. So are well known founders of Mayo Clinic, former mayors and other dignitaries.
My great-grandparents built and ran a greenhouse a few blocks from the cemetery. It was a convenient place for people to buy flowers before visiting family graves. In earlier times, when travel from the surrounding countryside took time by horse and carriage, people often brought food and picnicked at the graves. My daughter, grandchildren, and I have occasionally spread a blanket here and eaten sandwiches and chips while we retell our favorite stories: making fruit salad with grandma and riding tractors with grandpa.
Nearby I can see a grassy section called Potter’s Field that hardly ever has visitors. I had been coming to this cemetery for decades before I learned that a thousand people are buried in there in unmarked graves. I wondered about their stories and did some research. Charles Jackson, a young Black man who died of tuberculosis (TB) in 1897, and an infant, whose unwed mother was accused of causing the child’s death are among them. Others died in accidents, by suicide, as well as from deadly diseases of the times: dysentery, diphtheria, cholera, and typhoid.
When I look at the wide-open section, I wonder who in Potter’s Field might have crossed paths with my family. Were they in the same class at school? Did they work together? Pass on a street corner. As I have for many years, I will return weekly to water the plants. When I do, I will appreciate the strength of my family’s legacy and the quiet power of those whose stories remain out of reach.
After learning about Potter’s Field, I wrote about it in Rochester: An Urban Biography.