On Memorial Day I Remember Rufus

It's Memorial Day.This day always reminds me of Rufus although Grandma didn’t necessarily wait until Decoration Day (as we called it then) to take flowers up to his grave on the hill.

My Grandma Hattie was married to Grandpa Jordan Hahn in the late 1800’s. They had five children, Thomas, Reuben (my father), Earl, and Estella. And then there was Rufus. I don’t know where he fit in. All I remember was that he died early as a baby. We didn’t talk about Rufus except when Grandma took me up to the Crown Hill Cemetery in our small town of Preston Minnesota. There the little gravestone with Rufus’s name on it lay off to one side. I remember how tenderly Grandma laid the best flowers from her garden on it. 

Naturally, I wanted to know more about Rufus then but the only thing I remember now is the way Grandma told me about how God had called little Rufus to Him early because he was such a precious baby. “Do you mean Rufus went up to heaven the way Jesus did, in his body?”

“No, Joycie, God only took Rufus’s soul.” 

“What did his soul look like?” I asked. But Grandma said we can’t see the soul with our eyes. So I made up a picture of baby Rufus’s soul in my mind. I looked up into the blue sky and imagined I could see a little wispy white cloud floating gently upward until it went out of sight because the sun blinded my eyes. 

I’ve been to many Memorial Day ceremonies in my time that were stirring tributes to those men and women who gave their lives to their country while serving in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. They’ve been impressive. Little Rufus might have lived to fight in World War I. I wonder what he would have looked like if he had. Might he have died giving his life to his country?  If he had, would his soul have looked the same? I think it may have still been a pure white cloud, only slightly bigger.