Memorial Day was started as a way of remembering those who died during the Civil War. Which leads to my tale.

There is a cemetery near where I lived that has a legend attached to it.

Forty years after the Civil War the family that lived closest to the graveyard noticed an odd occurance. Every year on the same night a bright light shown out of the graveyard. The oldest son decided to find out what was happening. So he hid out amongst the stones waiting. About midnight he saw a light seeming to move from one side of the cemetery to the other. The eerie light glowed and seemed to expand. He crept closer and closer until he could see an unbelievable sight.

A woman in black with a black veil was placing a small bouquet of posies on a grave surrounded by other graves. The odd thing was he could see through her. He blinked several times trying to make sense of this. Finally she turned and went back the way she came. Next to the small fence she seemed to disappear. There was a lone grave with no marker.

The next day he talked to the oldest man in the church.

"That grave belongs to old Mrs Grubb. She was the last of her family to go. She survived her only son by thirty years."

"Did she visit her son's grave?"

"Sure did son. Every year on the day he died and put a small bunch of flowers there. Stopped the day she got sick and died."

"Why didn't they put her with him?"

"No room. A lot of soldiers buried all around him."

In this cemetery even the dead remember their soldiers. So on this Memorial day remember those that have fallen-- either in war or that served and died later. It doesn't matter whether you believe in wars or not. It does matter that these soldiers are remembered.

In Shirley Temple's movie "The Bluebird of Happiness" (1940) there is a quote that says "you are not truly gone as long as someone remembers you."

In Mrs Grubb and her son's case even death couldn't stop the memory.

Take care my friends!

My Niece Willard and I would like to tell you the story of a young man who lived in the 1800’s in a small community not far from where we live. Young Jimmy McElhaney worked in a lead mine. He was a sober serious boy of eighteen.
His family had tried to keep him home on the farm since he was the youngest child and his mother’s darling.
This being the week Easter came on he was trying to get all his work done so he could go home and be with the family for Easter dinner.
It was a cold and rainy day that had started out warm and dry. Here he was walking back to the boarding house in his shirtsleeves without a coat. By morning he was running a high fever but still he kept working at the mine.
By Wednesday his mother had been called to his bedside. His breathing short and ragged. The doctor came and sat on one side while Mrs. McElhaney sat at the other holding her baby’s hand.
The morning of Good Friday came and in the wee hours poor Jimmy’s breathing grew quieter and quieter until the only thing left to hear was his mother’s weeping. Weeping as if her heart was breaking.
The doctor slowly pulled the sheet up over the boy’s face and led the grieving mother from the room.
Men came and laid out his body while other men made his coffin from pine boards.
That evening the funeral was held with everyone in town in attendance.
Mrs. McElhaney stayed until Sunday because nobody could take her home until after that day.
Easter morning came with a beauty that was unfathomable to the poor mother.
Everyone was at the small church that stood near the general store.
The preacher was just getting into full sermon mode about how Jesus came back from the grave when there was a noise from outside the building. An even louder one followed from outside the door.
Everyone turned as the door opened and light streamed in.
Mrs McElhaney stood up, gasped, and promptly slid to the floor unconscious.
There in the door, glowing from the halo of sunlight, was young Jimmy in his store bought suit of clothes with dirt in his hair and fresh blood on his hand.
The McElhaney’s don’t talk much about this little misunderstanding but many people in Southeast Tennessee talk about the man who rose from the dead on Easter.

Didn’t think old Auntie had any stories to tell did ya?? This is a story that I heard in my youth. I can’t vouch for it’s legitimacy but one never knows do they?

As many of you have read on My young friend Fairweather’s blog we have a mutual friend named Madame Sadie. I am using that term very loosely.
Sadie is perhaps the worst psychic in the area and perhaps the most well known. True talents prefer to be incognito. At least I haven’t heard of any others around here.
I admit Willard and I are more aware of things around us than Sadie usually is, barring Captain Morgan-- that is.
Which leads me to what Sadie has gone and done. Three days ago, Sadie came to my home where I was fixing some herbal remedies, and beseeched me to cover her "shop" for her.
"Ornery, you know I don’t trust anyone else to cover for me. "
"Sadie, get on with it. My Cough medicine is boiling away."
"Ornery, I need to go talk to my Sadie Hawkin’s date. I haven’t heard from him. He left in such a hurry claiming one of the children was ill."
"Sadie remember when T Jack left, it wasn’t for no job. You scared him senseless."
"I didn’t mean to. And this time it was the Captain not me!"
"Where are you going to get the money. You spend all you get on Bud Light."
"I have enough stashed away. Please Ornery."
Yes I gave in. But only because I didn’t want my hard work destroyed while I tried to reason with that old bat Sadie. I’ve seen what a chase she leads Willard and Fairweather on. Those two are sweet caring innocent children compared to Sadie.
Well she took off that night after leaving her house key with me (makes sense when you think her shop is in the parlor. ) She neglected to feed her cat (a black cat named Familiar of all things), turn off the kitchen stove, and the water in her shower. I took care of these problems but I drew the line at picking up her new Sadie Hawkins dress, a skin bikini ( I assume it is the possum one) and a motheaten costume that looked like a Scarlet O’Hara reject.
I took a page from Willard’s book—I took a cleaning cloth with me and got rid of a full pound of talcum powder from Sadie’s glass ball and the table and chairs. I emptied the garbage can full of glass bottles into a recycling container which ended up weighing over thirty pounds at the glass recycling center. I even checked that older refrigerator of hers to see if she had anything in there that needed getting rid of. No food but stacks of Bud Light two deep filled the entire thing except for the small section that was supposed to be the freezer. And nothing at all was in it. She evidently lives on Bud Light.
My one "client" was a man who Sadie had told was being followed by the devil. Poor guy. He believed her too.
"Harry, Sadie left a drink for you. It will keep that devil from you forever." I handed him a cup of my cherry bark cough syrup diluted heavily so that it just calmed him some. "You drink that and go home to bed. When you wake up it’ll be over."
I whispered a quiet word as he drank it. He handed me Sadie’s envelope and left. His "devil" remained behind where I had told him to.
"William Hicks. You’ve been dead three years. Don’t you think it’s time to leave your boy alone and head toward the light?"
"That featherhead needs me."
"No he don’t. You are dead. He’s a grown man and will have to deal with whatever problems life throws at him. If you had been taking care of him he wouldn’t be VISITING SADIE." I took a little powder from my pocket and threw it in the air so that the light shimmered. "Irene has waited long enough for you to get there to her. Go!"
"Aunt Ornery, tell my boy I loved him."
"I will." At my nod he walked off from the shimmering powder into a long tunnel and waved one last time at it’s end.
Oh Sadie, how could you claim to be a psychic and not help that boy or his father. The old bat makes me so frustrated.
This morning Sadie finally came back. According to her she tracked her "date" all over England and the only thing she found was people who claimed he peeked around corners like a scared hound.
I only hope Sadie don’t come visiting me again anytime soon.

As you know Old Auntie was in the car wreck. Today I heard that my old reliable will probably be totaled (nothing official yet).
It got me thinking about how many things have changed in my life just in the last two years and how fate seems to be taking me even further into the unknown.
All my life has been spent caring for other people. My sister, mother, grandmother, Aunts, Uncles, cousins, children I helped raise.
But three years ago fate set a wheel in motion changing most of my known reality.
Now when it seems that the end of caring for other members of my family is near I gain a caring man in my life, lose my car, am thinking of moving out of the only home I've ever known and finding a better house to finish the rest of my life.
The feelings this brings are mixed. I gave up so many years on others never even daring to dream of what my future would involve. I'm sad that so many familiar things are leaving-- either in lingering deaths or painful crashes. I'm glad at the thought of a future that, hopefully, does not include the pain I have endured so many years.
The agony is losing the good as well as the bad.
Even my dear young Fairweather who has seen me through these times ultimately doesn't understand. I only hope fate protects her from ever going through these "trying times". (Yes a misquote of Dickens-The best of times/the worst of times speach and "these are the times that try mens souls").
You can be proud of Old Auntie though. I took down some things from the wall and put them in boxes so that when I do get another house they will be ready to move. A small thing but a start. As Kris Kringle says to the Winter Warlock it's "One foot in front of the Other".

Keep me in you thoughts my friends. This is perhaps the hardest thing of many that I've ever had to do.

Fairweather thinks I'm condescending on this one. I'm not really. In all my years of life I have been through things even she knows nothing about. I've seen her life go through very hard times as well. Yet there are things that I hope never happen in her life. Sorry if I offended Fairweather.

Well Ol Auntie has the winter blues or cabin fever I suppose. I stayed in most of the weekend with a bad case of sinusitis. Now today I was supposed to work but in the end still wasn't able to do what needed doing. The day is sunny but for all the way I feel it could be a blizzard outside. Somehow I wish I was in a sunny place with nothing to bring on the blues.