The Appalachian Origins of Memorial Day
By Kristen Bird
My grandmother Johnnie Fay Brock, born and raised in north Alabama, was obsessed with death. Not in the hip-gothic Wednesday Addams kind of way, but in the “we’d better get ready for the worst” kind of way.
From the time I was six years old (and she was an ancient 47), Nana began telling me she was on the verge of being “an old lady” and reminded me that I would need to take care of her. When I was in my early twenties, I spent a memorable afternoon with her and my Aunt Bonnie Kay (yes, their names rhymed), her identical twin sister, listening to them discuss their headstones, grave plots, and funeral invites.
For her entire life, Nana had a handful of traditions to remember her “kinfolk” that had gone before her. She filled photo albums with snapshots of friends and family members at rest in their caskets (a startling find in the top of her closet!), and each May she spent Sundays cleaning and sprucing up the graves of loved ones. This annual tradition is known in the southern Appalachians as Decoration Sunday, or Decoration Day, and it’s thought to be the inspiration behind the broader Memorial Day holiday.
I never personally participated in Decoration Sunday because the day began to fall out of fashion with my parents’ more transitory generation, and by the time us late-millenials came on the scene, this annual remembrance was almost a relic. But, every May, until my grandmother died two years ago, she would mention casually that she had to head over to Mt. Vernon or White Oak (churches in her area) for Decoration. Without having to ask a question, I knew exactly what she’d be doing: expending physical labor to remember those she’d loved and lost.
Covid was perhaps the first time in my forty years that I had to think about death on a regular basis. Two of my family members died—my grandmother and her son, my uncle—in quick succession, and my grandfather came to live in Texas with my parents. Because my family is filled with caregivers—my mom is a nurse, I’m a teacher, and my husband is a pastor—many days during this season were heavy with suffering and grief.
I remember one Sunday in April of 2020: starting to cry heaving sobs with my three children around me as I watched CBS Sunday Morning and saw images of cooling trucks placed outside of Houston hospitals to hold the dead. I think many of us during that time needed an outlet to process the grief we were feeling, not only on a personal level but also on a societal level. A tradition like Decoration Sunday—a day to remember, to grieve, to celebrate—would have given us that opportunity.
I know that nostalgia can be a dangerous idealization of the past, and I realize that my grandmother’s era was fraught with problems, but I wonder if she knew something about processing grief that I still don’t.
Death was much more communal when my parents were young. My father remembers sitting up with the dead in a Southern Baptist version of a vigil. The deceased family member would be washed and placed in a casket inside the house. The family would gather to talk and eat and remember.
When my father was young, he attended Decoration in the 1960s and ‘70s. The day started with a church service on Sunday morning and was followed by “dinner on the ground” and a good old-fashioned sangin’ of hymns. Women would pull out potluck casseroles, sides, and desserts: fried chicken, corn on the cob, hashbrown potato casserole, strawberry cake, banana pudding. The men would bring out chairs and tables. Children would eat on blankets or run down to the creek for a quick swim.
The ritual of decorating the graves started by scrubbing them clean before adding gravel, or dirt as needed, and setting out flowers. My grandmother said that her mother had her very own flower garden, specifically grown for use each May during the season of Decoration.
My grandmother didn’t die of Covid, but she did pass away during a time when we couldn’t visit her in the hospital or safely attend her graveside funeral as a family. Watching mourners through Zoom did not offer the closure that I needed, and months later when I was finally able to get back home and see her final resting place in the Appalachian foothills, I was surprised by the fresh wave of grief that washed over me.
I know that nostalgia can be a dangerous idealization of the past, and I realize that my grandmother’s era was fraught with problems, but I wonder if she knew something about processing grief that I still don’t. Perhaps the generation that came of age during World War II, parented through Vietnam, and acted as powerless but concerned grandparents through 9/11 and rising gun violence knows the importance of communal mourning.
While mourning my Nana’s death, I wrote my second novel, I Love It When You Lie, a story of three sisters grieving the loss of their beloved grandmother in their Appalachian hometown while they must decide how to get rid of a good-for-nothin’ man. As I wrote this story, set around the week of Decoration Sunday, my grandmother’s voice came back to me, allowing me to revisit her memory time and again. Writing this book—typing, editing, revising—became my personal Decoration, my own act of physical remembering. I think Nana would be proud, and she’d probably tell me to leave a copy on her grave.
To experience Decoration Sunday firsthand, check out Kristen Bird’s most recent psychological suspense novel set in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains near her hometown in Alabama. I Love It When You Lie is available now. Her debut novel, The Night She Went Missing, is set in Galveston. She currently teaches high school English and lives outside of Houston, Texas, with her husband, three daughters and lab mix.