the annual cemetery sprucing up

Today would have been Angie's 96th birthday. In trying to decide which picture of her I wanted to use for this post, she whispered down and said - "oh the one where I look so nice in that striped sweater and rolled up jeans". I agreed with her suggestion.

I don't know about you and picture taking, but I know when mom was really sick, near the end of her life, I still tried to take lots of pictures of her. They are hard to look at. When it's happening, while you do understand how poorly someone is doing, when you look back from a distance gosh the changes are glaring. The passage of time gives everything a different perspective. Brother and I have regular conversations about this.

Dottie and Chris and I had a nice time down in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas on our trip for the annual cemetery sprucing up, which is set to coincide with mom and dad's birthdays. It doesn't hurt that it is also a really nice time to be down there. This year marked the 10th anniversary of this ritual. The weather was perfect and the colors amazing.

We discussed all the cemetery clean-ups gone by and how nice it would be if ALL the Moss kids and families could gather here every year. We do our best. This photo below from 2016 with the kids was an especially memorable year.

A little clipping, cleaning the stones, changing the flowers, and before you know it the work is done. Then we sit and admire, discuss how perhaps this has been the best year yet for the colors on the trees, eat some lunch, and wonder if it wouldn't be great to have a couple of stone benches put up instead of hauling the lawn chairs. We are not getting any younger.

Of course we are still agile enough to set up the camera for a selfie and race around in time to get into the photo. Which is saying something.

We agreed to remind each other next year not to forget the whisk broom, which is on the list of things to bring, but somehow got overlooked. We did remember the tamales which is the traditional first night's dinner of our trip. Better to forget the whisk broom than the tamales. Anytime.