Memorial Day Weekend: Sunday - A Day of Remembering

Sunday morning Tom and I were up early to get a good start on our trip south to Portland, Oregon, where we met my sister Ilene and began our tour of cemeteries and visits to those from whom we are descended. 

Our first stop was at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery on Mt Scott in southeast Portland, where our paternal grandparents, Olaf and Emma Norquist, are buried. Neither of us had visited this cemetery before, but with excellent help from volunteers, we were directed right to their resting place. 

This is a large urban cemetery high on a hillside overlooking Portland, and bordering the Willamette National Cemetery.

Then we went out into the country, to our homeland, the small town of Molalla. We had lunch in town and then drove up into the hills to Adams Cemetery, where our parents Henry and Violet Norquist are buried.

This beautiful place is surrounded by green fields and stands of oak trees and vast plantings of Christmas tree farms. 

And here is my mother's mountain, Mt Hood, which she could see from all of her homes in the valley.

Her original home was in the hills of the area known as Clarkes, and just up the road from the old farmhouse of my grandparents, her parents, is the Clarkes Pioneer Cemetery.

Now we are even more rural.

And the Christmas tree farms are vast. Of course once these fields grew wheat or oats and grass for hay. Trees are now the money crop. 

And here my sister and I have deep roots. 

These are my great grandparents.

My double great grandparents, parents of Hanna.

And my triple great grandmother Mary.

However, my grandparents, my mother's parents, are not buried in Clarkes, but in the valley town of Canby, a "modern" cemetery. 

We had such a good day with Ilene, traveling back roads, remembering the people who passed on, and passing by old and familiar places from our childhood.

We finished the day with dinner joined by our cousin Susan and her husband Jim. Susan is the daughter of my mother's sister Alma, and she shares many of our memories. Of course there was more remembering as we ate and talked together.

Ilene and Susan and Jim returned to their homes in Oregon. Tom and I are in a hotel in Woodburn, where on Monday and Tuesday we will be touring gardens and enjoying the beauty of my valley homeland.