Memorial Day Weekend

Three years ago, my baby brother died from covid. He was only 48. He has four daughters. They were going to find a head stone and did not. So this year, my next youngest brother found a rock to put his name and dates on and a larger piece of wood to put in memory of and his union number.

The wood piece is large and will hold up until his daughters are old enough to make a decision about what they would like to put there. So, it's temporary.

That brother who took care of this is 10 years younger than me, and he did that for an uncle also that has a daughter who had plans to get a headstone and hasn't yet.

Nothing against the girls as headstones are expensive and what they may want probably doesn't always fit their budget. And because there are four of them, they probably want to pick it out together.

We took care of the graves that are a six-hour round trip from me, for two uncles, my mother and father, grandparents, a cousin and my sister and brother. We plant marigolds every year as we have found they are hardy and will last until the middle to end of October.

My in-laws are buried close to where we live and my husband's grandparents, aunts, and siblings are there too. He cares for their graves every year. He puts artificial flowers out for each and weed whacks. This year he is planning to do some work on a headstone.

Anyway, I guess this is what happens when you are the oldest child and outlive many. My husband and I are both the oldest sibling in our families. I believe recovery is responsible for us still being here. And it does beat the alternative.

We did all of this the week and weekend before this Memorial Day weekend as we had plans to attend an annual recovery event.

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Over 6,000 people registered this year for the Gopher State event that we attended. One year it was over 10,000. The recovery event is sobriety. It is for families, friends, the alcoholics and some people wear both hats.

I mistakenly said over 6,000 drunks in one place when talking to my son's fiancé. I forget that everyone doesn't know the lingo. She looked at me and when I laughed, she laughed too. The speakers are excellent and this year there were speakers representing LGBTQ+.

Some people last year were asking for more diversity I heard! They got it. May not have been what they meant but it was diverse. I loved it! The speakers were all great. I ordered a flash drive to listen to the speakers again.

There were eight main speakers for the weekend and then a couple others that could be purchased separately. The speakers are primarily national presenters that speak all over the country.

The presentations came from Florida, California, Nashville (two musicians), New York, Colorado and another 2 states/countries that I am not remembering right now. Maybe Ireland?

The hubby and I started attending every year when our youngest daughter got into recovery. Actually, I joke about this, but it is the truth, when my husband got into a family program all four of his kids stopped drinking. It was a miracle.

When I asked him what he learned he said to not enable them and to not bail them out when they got into trouble.

Two of his children have stayed in recovery and both attend this event. It has been 9 years now. We spend time with them. Meals, conversations, watch a couple grandkids swim in the pool and of course, speakers that we can listen to in person or via our hotel room.

This year we were on the 20th floor of the hotel when the fire alarm rang out asking us to take the nearest exit to the main floor. Even though going down the stairs is easier, after 20 floors my legs were pretty wobbly. The fire department gave an all clear just as we landed on the first floor.

Rather than going out to eat with the rest, I picked up dinner at the hotel.

The event is fun and we all enjoy our time together and our time with friends we know in recovery. It is like a family reunion as we see people we have known for a long time and some that we see regularly from our local meetings.

We planned to ride motorcycle if the weather cooperated. It didn't, as it was windy and raining on our trip down on Friday. Beautiful on Saturday and nice on Sunday. We had a great weekend, and I hope you had a great weekend too!