Memorial Day Weekend

In America, the summer season is framed by two holidays: Memorial Day and Labor Day. Although summer doesn't start officially for another month, you'd never know that in Northeast Ohio. The days are warm with occasional showers and the evenings are cool. Today has been gorgeous. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the air smells of freshly mowed grass and barbecues.

Saturday, my brother, Tom, my youngest nephew, Pat and I took up our grandparents' tradition and went to the cemeteries and trimmed around headstones, washed markers and left flowers. In addition to my grandparents and my Mom, we also located my biological grandfather's grave (Arthur C. Holland) in Cuyahoga Falls and my great-uncle's (Russell Foster) almost-overgrown headstone in the same cemetery as my friend Mark Willsey. Although I never met Art or Russell, they live in the memories of the stories my grandmother told. I also made a sabbatical to my friend Sean Cannon's grave in Uniontown.

Yesterday I did some lawn work, and visited my friends Jim & Marlo Nighman at their new house. The actual move is next weekend, so they were busy painting and cleaning. Then last night, I watched my own Firefly mini-marathon, catching the following episodes: "Jaynestown," "Out of Gas," "Ariel," "Trash," "The Message" and "Objects in Space." No matter how many times I watch this program, it never ceases to grab my attention. Amazing stuff.

So far today I've clipped some hedges, fed the birds, played online and took one of the most relaxing naps ever. Jake is a bit out of sorts -- this morning he was all set to go to daycare, not to have his Dad around the house all day. I really need to buckle down and get my materials together for the ASL class that starts next week. I still need to clean up the code on my Charon's Map web pages and add two more for Art Holland and Russell Foster.

It's just so damn pretty outside! I'd much rather sit on the patio with a cool drink in my hand and my faithful canine lifemate at my feet. What to do, what to do?

Charon's Map

Spring has finally sprung in Northeast Ohio. I've already mowed grass twice and it really needs it again. The patio furniture is cleaned and the umbrella is in its perch. Hell, I've even killed my first batch of ants foraging in my kitchen -- it must be spring!

I recently finished a web project I've been working on for more than a year. I hope to have it online before Memorial Day, as it was originally intended in 2006. This might seem a tad... morose, but bear with me.

I'm usually not much for paying my respects to the dead. I've visited the gravesites of my friends Mark and Sean sporadically over the years, as well as those of my grandparents. But it's always kind of an ordeal. I can never remember exactly where they are buried and then I have to tromp around cemeteries, looking at headstones and hoping I'm even in the right section.

I made a concerted effort to get better at this back in Spring, 2005. It had been so long since my last visit to the graves of my grandparents (buried in different cemeteries with their respective previous spouses) that I actually had to stop at the offices and get maps. The folks in both places were very helpful and as I started to gather this documentation, an idea germinated. To avoid having to go through all that again, I should scan the documents, take some photos and create an online guide to where my friends and family reside in perpetuity.

See, told ya, morose, right?

I kept the documents, made some notes on where Mark and Sean are buried and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Then in September of that same year, my mother passed away and I had another reason to think about commemorating the dead. So last Memorial Day, I bought fake flowers for all the people who have passed through my life and left an indelible impression and set out to record their burial places and monuments. They are scattered around five different cemeteries in four different communities. But I have them all.

My brother and I recently had a headstone set for my mother and new vases installed on her grave and on my grandmother's grave as well. It seemed like the right time to create the web pages and upload them, linked through my personal website. The pages are done, though I used Microsoft software to create them, so I need to go into the HTML and strip out all the superfluous "dirty" code before posting.

I'm calling the group of pages Charon's Map, an homage to my love of Greek mythology. Charon ferried the souls of the dead (who could pay the fare, the reason Greeks were buried with coins on their eyes) down Acheron (the river of woe), then down the Cocytus (the river of lamentation), into the Lethe (the river of forgetfulness), through the Phlegethon (the river of fire) and on to the Styx (the river of hate) to arrive at the gates of the underworld, where they were greeted by Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hell. (If any of this sounds familiar, rock bands, television and films have been borrowing this imagery for many years.)

So what do you think, dear reader? Is this too somber, too obsessive? Should the dead be left in the ground and forgotten, their lives commemorated through the memories of their days in the sunshine?