Due to a quirk of the calendar, Memorial Day weekend comes a little early this year.

Are you ready, genealogists?

While technically Memorial Day was specifically designed to remember those who’ve died while in the U.S. Armed Forces, long-time readers of “Roots & Branches” know that I’ve always taken a more expansive view of the holiday — making it into one in which all deceased ancestors are memorialized.

I well recall my mother, Mildred Hiester Beidler, wrapping coffee cans in red, white and blue tinfoil and filling the cans with peonies cut from the border of her garden.

She took these planters to her parents, grandmother and the great-grandparents who helped raise her. While my dad’s mother, Dora A. Etchberger Beidler, was alive, my mom would drive her to the grave of Grandpop Beidler, as well as three generations of her Etchberger ancestors.

When I began my genealogy journey just a few years after my Gramom Beidler died, I expanded the pool of potential graves to decorate several fold.

I’ve spent some Memorial Day holidays spraying the D/2 solution to clean tombstones.

Sometimes I’ve used the Find A Grave website to locate additional memorial markers that I’d given up thinking could even be found (like that of fifth-great-grandfather Christian Albrecht, hiding just a few miles away from me at Epler’s United Church of Christ).

I’ve also made sure that the veterans flags at ancestors’ graves are properly displayed, starting with my dad, Richard L. Beidler, a stateside Korean War Marine, and going all the way back to one of my mother’s Revolutionary War soldier ancestors, Peter Kirschner, whose 1747 baptism appears in the register of Bern Reformed UCC, and is buried on the Historic Old Graveyard of the same church.

I just about always make at least one climb up the hill on that graveyard, since between it and the new cemetery at Bern, I have three dozen direct-line ancestors buried! (And within the last year I’ve made my own arrangements and have put in motion getting my own tombstone put in place for what I hope will be a long stretch of pre-need!)

Other times I’ve decided to visit all the graves in one of my direct lines, like I did last year with my direct Beidler line (this year, having discovered new Beidler second cousin Kathryn Moser of Newmanstown as a relative with an interest in genealogy, we’re planning a similar excursion).

And, of course, let’s not forget about having a cookout during the weekend!

Mine will be what I call the “All American” … hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, and cole slaw (I also plan to work at my church’s monthly food pantry, too, which falls on the holiday weekend).

What will you do on this year’s Memorial Day weekend?

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler).