Memorial Day and the Aftermath

I haven't written a blog entry for a while, but not because I didn't have anything to say. Actually I started and pulled  the plug on several entries since my last post.

Of particular note, I would like to single out my essay on Zombie Television Shows, or shows that continue long after the natural finale because the network doesn't want them to die, shows like After MASH, or The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

Basically I was going to compare them to the modern zombie in that they are horrific abominations that play off the existing fan base and their familiarity with the characters and their affection for the show.

Then I was going to mention Scrubs: Med School and how it made me miss the House finale (because C. was watching the show with us and he griped every time my wife and I would watch an episode of something without him, even if it was something we were watching as well like Bones or Supernatural) and then I would transition to the topic of spin-offs and I was going to maneuver to finish with the awkward joke "For every Joey there's a Frasier." (Which my Robin loved when I woke her up to tell her about it at 4 a.m. but likely wasn't as funny or as clever as I thought.)

Anyway, the title at the top of this page isn't "Zombie Television Shows," the title is "Memorial Day and its Aftermath," unless I decide to change the "its" to a "the," which is a very real possibility.

It would flow better, I think, with a "the."

Okay, "the" it is.

Where was I? Oh yes, Memorial Day.

My parents had me over for grilled burgers and potato salad, and then left me alone on the couch for a couple of hours while they visited the cemetery.

My parents don't have air conditioning (not beyond a small window unit or two) so it was unbearably hot in their house and I didn't quite catch where they were going.

My mother's father was career military but he was cremated and as far as I know is still in a box on my aunt's TV cabinet, waiting until his wife dies so we can make a family trip to a national park in California to scatter their ashes together.

It's a romantic gesture and I don't mind that my grandmother is making us wait, but for now my grandfather doesn't have a grave to visit.

The other possibility I considered was my father's friend Ralph Coy who had died in a car accident last year and was buried as a veteran. As it turns out they had considered going to see him, but decided the distance was too far.

He's buried about an hour south of Louisville, but since I got lost on the way to the funeral I don't know exactly where.

I do know that if I take a state highway of some sort all the way west until it ends, eventually I would arrive at the funeral home, if I turned left instead of right or some other miniscule bit of direction I didn't discover until I spent two hours driving up and down either Bardstown or Elizabethtown Road and missed the funeral.

And was late picking up the kids from school as I recall.

Where they actually went, as I discovered when my wife posted photos of Grace at the cemetery on Facebook, was Sunset Memorial Gardens in Frankfort, where my father's parents are buried.

When Robin told me on the way back to Lexington, I was deeply embarrassed. I had forgotten Grandpa served in the Korean War.

My Grandma and he are buried in a drawer together and I tend to forget that he was a veteran as well, mainly because my other grandfather was career military and retired after serving as a key punch operator at the Bluegrass Army Depot.

His house was pictures of him in uniform and his children were born shortly after each major war of the twentieth century, starting with my Aunt Carol who was born after World War II and continuing down to my mother who was the youngest and born after Korea.

She was born at Fort Knox, on the army base, and her birthplace is listed as Fort Knox.

When I was growing up in Arkansas I didn't know that most of the world knew Fort Knox as the place where the United States kept their gold reserves. It was the place where my mother was born.