A visit long overdue

My parents are buried in a country cemetery in England, Arkansas, a 30-minute drive southeast from North Little Rock.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t been to their graves in too long — so long, in fact, that I’m not even sure how long.

But I remedied that transgression last weekend. My wife, Lisa, and I were in central Arkansas for a busy weekend of personal business and family activities, and we made it a point to pay our respects.

My dad grew up in the country near England, an old Arkansas agricultural town on the edge of the Delta. Driving in from North Little Rock, where my oldest son and his family live in a neighborhood of gently sloping hills, the change in terrain is noticeable as the land flattens out. In a few months, the roadside fields will be full of cotton and soybeans — less cotton now than in the heyday 100 years or more ago. If my grandfather were still alive, he could tell you all about those times. He was born in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps and serving in World War II. He was a sharecropper for a while, trading his toil and sweat for a bit of the profits from the cotton he helped grow.

When we arrived at the cemetery, it took me a bit to locate my parents’ marker. It’s a fairly large cemetery and, As I said, it had been too long since I’d been there. I knew the general area, but when I didn’t spot their stone right away, I began to doubt myself. But after we parked and set out on foot, I spotted my uncle’s marker and knew we were in the right area. It was Lisa who actually spotted my parents’ graves first. She had forgotten that my dad’s name was Ronnie — my oldest son is named after him.

We gently cleaned up the remains of flowers left by previous visitors and replaced them with new ones — artificials we’d purchased the day before. We left a bouquet of yellow flowers for Mom and dark blue for Dad, along with a small United States flag to honor his service in the the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

My grandparents are buried a fair distance away from my parents, on the edge of the cemetery adjacent to a soybean field. I had told Lisa that my grandfather had a foot marker honoring his Marine Corps service. She found the spot again, first noticing my Uncle Sammie’s grave next to his mother’s. I wish I had planned ahead better; I would have brought flowers for Uncle Sammie, too. He was a good man, always kind and gently teasing toward his nieces and nephews. I didn’t see much of him as I got older, but I remember him fondly. He was there when my dad died in 2012, helping my brothers and me make funeral arrangements. Another enduring memory is Uncle Sammie fishing with us, seeming to pull a fish out of the creek every time his hook hit the water.

Lisa and I left another small flag next to my grandfather’s headstone before we walked back to our car and drove back to North Little Rock to return to our weekend fun.

Visiting the cemetery was a bittersweet experience — a stark reminder of how much I miss the people who helped shape me but a reminder, too, of how fortunate I was to have them and how blessed I am to carry their memories in my heart.

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Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of the Carroll County News. His email address is SLoftis@CarrollCoNews.com.