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66 NOLA GARRETT Decoration Day Driving to the cemetery with everything you need for planting geraniums, you hear the water slosh, the spade settle, and know this grave gardening isn’t easy. The flowers are the wrong color red, Aunt Martha tells you. Honey, we’ve always had magenta. Honey, now turn left here, then right. Everything seems confounding: your parents’ graves on the wrong side of the cemetery lane. You haul the flowers and what water hasn’t spilled to where you know your parents are, although you know they will never know you are here. Honey, look over there. George Whiteley wasn’t a veteran. Why’s he got a flag? Everything about this cemetery has gone downhill. You follow Aunt Martha’s instructions, move the wrong flag to the right grave. Poor Tom Brown, wrong again. Flunked out of school, you know. Joined the navy just in time for Pearl Harbor. You remember how he limped up your walk peddling honey in bear-shaped jars and beeswax candles—everything sweet and warm—and how your mother wasn’t really smiling when she said, “Isn’t it good to see you again, Tom.” Is it wrong to think that way about your mother? Everything about her seemed so clear, yet you know sometimes she let things happen, like honey left too long turning into sugar. You plant what you now see are orange geraniums you will abandon to their death, for this isn’t a cemetery with perpetual care. Honey, I’ll take those pots, so you won’t buy the wrong color again next year. You know how your mother loved pink and rose everything. Honey, turning right then left isn’t wrong. Turn left after the gate. You know, I can’t thank you enough for everything. ...

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