Sherry Chandler

When I called my mother last night, she told me that the three little sisters had been to see her. These are her sisters children, her three nieces, all middle-aged women now with grown children of their own, but to my 90-year-old mother, they are still the little sisters.

The sisters had returned to the home town on this lovely May weekend to “visit the graves.” In the South, we call this spring memorial to the dead “Decoration Day,” and we use it to remember not just our war dead, but all of our dead kin. To be remembered is as near as we can get to immortality in this world.

For a description of how this holiday is observed, here is an excerpt of Georgia Green Stamper’s essay, “Decoration Day:”

There was a time, not so long ago, when Memorial Day was more than an excuse for a Bacchanal picnic marking the beginning of summer. Before the mall and its three-day sale, before everybody had a public or private swimming pool to open, before the holiday always fell on the last Monday of May — my family celebrated something we called Decoration Day.

This was an accurate description of the way my rural Kentucky family observed the May holiday because we did, indeed, decorate. Iris and peonies grew abundantly in our yard, and our ancestral clan was — or had been — large. We would rise early, my grandfather and I, to clip bushels of the dew-touched flowers, and before the day was over, we would complete our annual transformation of the New Columbus cemetery into a glorious garden such as Monet, himself, might have painted. In fact, had Monet been related to us, we would have decorated his final resting place too, because we didn’t want any of our dead kin to feel left out. Even now, I am compelled to place a plastic flower on the grave of every relative who ever sat around a Christmas table with us, and in more forgiving years, even on the graves of some who didn’t.

…

In my memory, these May Sundays were always perfect, warm, spring days; it never rained, the wind never blew, and we never got hungry or thirsty

…

Walking through the cemetery with Gran was both a history lesson for me, and a crash course in his philosophy of life. I knew from his stories who he respected, and why; those he disapproved of; and those he loved in spite of their shortcomings. He told me about old jokes and pranks played a half century earlier. He told me of parties and childhood crushes. He taught me the names of the old families, the pioneers. He taught me about a place, about a culture. He taught me who I was, and who he hoped I might become.

You can read this and many other essays in Georgia’s Book You Can Go Anywhere (Wind Publications, 2008).

The summer 2008 edition of Rattle devotes a special 60-page full-color section to visual poetry. Ruth Bavetta has written to announce that her three pieces from her series “Readings” will be featured in this issue.

Ruth works in a medium called altered books. The piece above is one she let me feature here back in 2005. It was done by altering an old yoga book. Here’s a newer example. This work is not that which is featured in Rattle.

For more examples of the art of altered books, try this site. I’ve been visiting for years.