The words “Memorial Day” caught my attention as we took our seats in the church sanctuary. I was impressed that someone had the presence of mind to show a screen commemorating the day, and even more so when the Pastor asked us to stand for a brief video presentation.
Memorial Day originated as a remembrance of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Over time, the remembrances expanded to loved ones who have passed. Some of my earliest memories are of “decoration Sunday,” when my parents, sister, and I would join other relatives to decorate the family graves.
For most of my life, my concept of remembrance and respect centered on grassy knolls and stone monuments. My 
perspective changed two years ago, when I visited an old pauper’s cemetery. There, plain PVC crosses mark the grave sites, most of which represent souls whose names are lost to time.
Our recent trip on the California Zephyr took us through the Sierra Nevadas and past an area that marks the final resting place for a group of early settlers. I read a history of the Donner Party as we waited for a freight train to pass and sensed the irony as I saw snowflakes begin to fall, as those travelers would have so many years ahead of my passage there.
As we passed through the rocky crags, I couldn’t imagine what those early settlers might have thought as they looked up, up, and further up at the steep mountainside littered with bou
lders. We finished a leisurely lunch on the train with a lovely couple from Pittsburgh about an hour before I read of the pitiful conditions of the Donner camps. Today, should a problem occur on the train, one is but a radio call away from help. I still shudder at the thought of the wagon train parents, as they came first to the realization that their provisions were insufficient to complete the journey, and later faced the grim reality of being trapped in the mountains during a harsh winter for which they were not prepared.
Recalling our excitement of boarding the train and looking out the windows as we moved through the countryside, I wondered if those frontier settlers felt similar excitement as the drivers set the wagons in motion. The majority who endured the winter in what we now know as Donner Pass were youngsters who, from the historic accounts they later provided, endured more than a lifetime of hardship in a span of five months. The survivors of that harrowing experience would no doubt be amazed that the remote wintry wilderness is now a place of recreation. Not far from the Sugar Bowl ski slopes is a memorial to those who died trying to reach a better place.
I suspect some wished they had never left their Illinois homes. But unlike those of us who travel west today, those early settlers reached a point of no return. No doubt they knew the trip was risky, but they took that risk in search of their promised land. Some reached California; others reached their eter
nal home.
As I look at pictures from Donner Lake, I think of our family plots in the well-kept graveyards I visit every Memorial Day. The Donner Party survivors left their loved ones behind. Because of the conditions of the camps, the remains of many who died there were cremated when the cabins were burned by a military funeral detail. That left only memories, and perhaps a memento that had been saved.
I regard Donner Pass as sacred ground. Regardless of temperament or behavior, each person who came to life’s rest in that snowy plain was some mother’s son or daughter. Each deserves the same respect I would convey upon the grave sites of my own family. We reap the benefits of those whose sacrifices forge the trail before us. We hope we learn from their missteps. We pray, in our most difficult or dangerous moments, that we will be sufficiently courageous and brave.
We remember.
Copyright 2018 Sherry A. Hathaway. All rights reserved.