When I was a young Girl Scout marching in Memorial Day parades, I don�t think I ever understood why I was there, or why we waved flags and listened to important speakers at the parade�s end in Pine View Cemetery.

As an adult, I can appreciate the ideals of patriotism and sacrifice commemorated by this holiday, but it�s still rather abstract. There aren�t any distinguished veterans in my family history to attach those qualities to and venerate. So, for me, this holiday often involves reflection on family members who have died.

Last Saturday, I drove with my parents and daughter down to the White Plains area and back. It wasn�t exactly a pleasure trip, although it was a pleasant day together. The main purpose for the excursion was to visit a cemetery.

A dozen or so of my maternal grandmother�s side of the family are buried in a beautiful, expansive cemetery in Hartsdale called Ferncliff. I�ve only been there three or four times in my life. We don�t get down there much, since no one in the family still lives downstate. (Ironically, most of the people buried there died on the west coast.)

We drove seven hours, approximately 500 miles down and back, for a ten-minute visit.

The grounds are well-manicured in this park-like cemetery. Yet my grandmother�s name was partially covered by the plentiful grass growing inward across the top half of the flat marker she shares with her mother. If I�d had the right tools I would have trimmed the grass. As it was, the best that I could do was clean off the marker with a cloth and push the grass away at the roots.

I was only five when my grandmother died. Although her name was Betty, I called her "Annie"�a toddler�s distortion of Granny, which is what her children called her in teasing fun on being made a grandmother at just 42.

What I remember most about her was how she played with me. Sometimes, my parents and I would stop by for a visit and Annie and I would disappear into her bedroom while my parents talked in the living room with my great-grandmother.

Annie let me go through her jewelry box and pretend to be a princess. She spread out a deck of cards and taught me Memory. She let me play a game I called Doodie Collins, an important part of which involved me hiding in the small utility closet and flicking the on/off switch to the vacuum cleaner.

I remember staying overnight and seeing my grandmother and her mother, sleeping in twin beds, both lying on their backs, hands folded across their stomachs. I remember her face above my hospital bed the night before I had my tonsils out, and afterwards bringing me ice cream when I was home recuperating.

I barely remember when I was three and she took me to see Pat Boone�the star of my favorite TV show�and tried to get me to kiss him.

What I don�t remember, what I only know because I�ve been told so many times, are the stories of how my grandmother cared for me as a newborn because my mother developed pneumonia and pleurisy shortly after delivering me and had to go back into the hospital for a week. And the stories of how she cared for me while my mother later went to business college.

There are sadder stories. How she took her three small children to Nevada for a divorce, and ended up staying. How she struggled with diabetes and other health problems. And the fact that she died of a stroke at age 48, when her youngest child was just 20.

I didn�t think about these things as I cleaned off her gravestone. I didn�t really think about much other than the fact that she deserved to have her name be seen, even if no one else comes to see it.

Then we set off to find my mother�s childhood home in White Plains itself, armed with instructions from an Internet mapping site. We didn�t stay there long, either. The current owner was working with a chimney sweep and didn�t seem to care about a stranger who had lived in his house as a child. It was awkward so we got back in the car after only a couple minutes.

My daughter was a good sport on this long, seemingly pointless (to a nine-year-old) trip. Just like me when I didn�t understand the purpose of marching in a Memorial Day parade, she doesn�t quite get why she went on this trek into the past.

Someday she will know how important the past is to our future. What she learns from history books, the family stories she hears from her elders, where she went yesterday and the things she does today; all of it will combine to affect who she is tomorrow.

Many people see life as a spiral. Just as a mountain road circles the peak to get to the summit, the path of your life goes around and around, frequently viewing where you�ve been before. Each time you look down, each time you revisit the past, you get a new perspective.

Where we�ve been�as a nation, as families and as individuals�can help guide us into the future. But only if we listen and let it.