A Day With The Folks

I’m not really sure why we love this day the way we do, and why every year, I take pictures like this one. Standing here, looking out at all these beautiful flowers–each one placed by someone–for another someone that they loved. It’s really quite breathtaking.

We bring flowers for my sweet momma and my dear daddy–who loved each other so, so much. Momma always said, “Whatever you do, please don’t ever put fake flowers on my grave.” So of course, we don’t.

She also asked us to remember her big brother, who died the same day he was born and weighed over 10 pounds. Poor little baby didn’t even have a name. I’ve always wondered why.

We bring flowers to my grandma and grampa too. She loved baking bread and pies and cookies and he was a fisherman. In his earlier days, he worked as a magician. Isn’t that just cool?

More lovely flowers.

I noticed this plaque on the side of a grave stone. It was put there to let people know that this person came to Utah between the years 1847 and 1897.

My great- grandma Sophia Beck needs one of those plaques too. She came from Sweden in 1864-ish and delivered about a million babies in Spanish Fork.

Hyrum was one of her sons–she had 7 or 8 of them–and two daughters, Elsie (my grandma) and Hannah.

Uncle Hyrum was in the American Legion–but I’m not sure what that means exactly.

Joseph E Beck was kinda the grandaddy of them all and helped settle the town of Spanish Fork in the first place.

I like to put flowers on his wife’s grave because my Aunt Hannah was named after her so she must have been a sweet lady. Plus she died way too young.

This little sprite loved playing tag and catch with her Uncle Bald kid…

and spent a good deal of her time picking up any stray flower pots that had tipped over in the wind. She got a kick out of making everything, “pretty again.”

There were even times when she had the best seat in the house.

My mom always said when we’d drive past these grave markers, “The Jexs’ were your great-grandma’s best friends in the whole world.

They had a broom making shop…and a parrot.”

Momma also used to point up to those far-away mountains and say, “That’s where the Indians used to come from.” She told us that the town would pay young boys to be look-outs in the canyon. If the Indians just wanted to trade for supplies, it was ok. But if they were painted and looked mad, the kids had to haul it back to warn the town. How’d you like to live that way? Gives me shivers.

What a perfectly happy day to remember the family that we miss and love so much.

Positively perfect.

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