In America, we have obvious weather-related seasons: fall, winter, spring and summer.  

Then we have other seasons, such as hunting, planting and harvesting. All of these seasons listed are recognized and celebrated accordingly across this great country of ours.  

But here in the rural south, we celebrate a season that only we understand. And while it’s unofficial, it is a valid part of our southern culture. It’s not really called a ‘season’ but for all intents and purposes, right now it’s Graveyard Season in Tennessee.  

‘Decoration day’ is a Sunday in the summer when local cemeteries decorate graves and pay homage to those ancestors laid to rest. Now, not all churches make a big rigmarole about it but then some put quite a bit of time and effort into their decoration days.  

Historically, these days were held as sort of a family reunion where people who had been raised in that church but moved away would travel back to that church and visit with family.  

Trying to explain this southern phenomenon to someone from ‘up north’ is always a challenge. They ask hard questions like ‘what do you do at the graveyard?’  

Answers range from ‘we put flowers on the graves before everyone gets there and we leave’ to ‘we put flowers on the graves and stand around talking about all the dead people’. 

Which is true in both parts. More social people like standing around and talking about the dead people, touring the graves, and remembering both the good and bad about the deceased.  

If it’s a larger party of people roaming the graveyard, the dead people are safe from scrutiny.  

But if just two people are walking around together, roaming the graveyard like it’s Walmart and pointing at graves and shaking their heads, you know those poor dead people are getting roasted.  

‘Don’t you wonder if Betty knew that Jim was sleeping with Freda over there?’ (Pointing to Freda’s headstone). And the answer might be ‘Sure she did.’ to which ‘but Betty and Freda were best friends’ would be the reply whilst clutching her pearls.  

‘Well, you know Jim was lazy, good for nothing, and a pain in the ass, so Betty was probably thankful that Freda got Jim to doing something and out from under her feet for a few hours’.  

Some churches will have dinners after church in celebration of their homecoming. The one that I grew up in had huge tables nailed to a line of old trees where fried chicken, potato salad and pimento and cheese sandwiches were spread out and after being prayed up by Brother Douglas, folks broke bread together and washed it all down with gallons of brown sweet tea brought in gallon glass jugs that were slippery from the summer condensation.  Like the pews in church, each section of those old tables had been assigned a long time ago to a family. So that’s where you went, you never took your fried chicken to another family section. My family’s table section was about midway and I felt good there.  

One or two families would take their eating to the graveyard and spread the food out on the ground on blankets on the ground around the graves and bring lawn chairs and eat. It would depend really on where their families’ graves were. If they were on the edge of the cemetery next to a shade tree, they’d most likely eat there. I guess they felt closer to the people they were paying homage to.  

I’m glad we ate at the big wooden tables because Freda and Jim’s discussions would never end if we had dinner with them.  After the eating was done, in true 60s fashion in an act that would anger most modern-day females, the men would leave the tables and go sit on the concrete block wall by the fresh spring behind the church and smoke and talk. Women would do the cleaning up of the food. Then men would load up the folding metal lawnchairs into the old cars that had huge trunks.  

Sometimes there would be ‘singings’ after church, and since we’d been busy prepping/fussin/transporting/sweating/more fussin/eating/talking about dead people, we didn’t always stay. We were done and went home and napped.  

Then later that day mom would go get the plastic flowers off the graves and store them for the next First Sunday in June.  

Gone are the days of a lot of celebrations at the graveyard. That generation has passed away for the most part and now lies in the graves themselves to be paid homage to. There are still Decoration Days down here, but not as much pomp and circumstance as once was.  

And although those wooden tables nailed to trees still stand after decades, the eating has moved into the fancy fellowship hall.  

Yesterday I needed to go with my wife to clean her folks’ graves for their celebration. I spent more than an expected amount of time one might expect in cleaning the grass out of a little white angel’s butt crack.  

And I think it’s pretty sad that they put her sweet Aunt Anne in the far back of the cemetery. I think they did that because it was a well-known fact that Anne couldn’t hardly stop talking, and they were afraid she’d keep all the dead awake.  

The first time I met her Aunt Anne, I asked my wife if Anne was born with a second set of lungs because she never stopped talking to breathe. 

Bless her heart.  

And THIS is the type of conversation that one might have while attending a Decoration Day in the sweltering summer heat during Graveyard Season in Tennessee.