While on Memorial Day we as people honor and remember all of those who died while serving our country, it is also important to see those who have died as individuals. They were like us once. As John McCrae wrote:
“We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie…”
In our commemoration, there is also a challenge, a warning. That there is something that these honored dead have to teach us about our duty. As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address:
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
We lay wreaths, we remember; however, in the end what does it really mean to commemorate?
I have written before about my experiences at the Vietnam Memorial. The overwhelming emotion of the place. On my first visit years ago, I had thought its proximity to the Lincoln Memorial, where the Gettysburg Address is inscribed on its south wall, was coincidental.
Now I think that the connection is providential. Those 58,000 names stand as part of what Lincoln said that day back in 1863. Whatever we may think of Vietnam and the wars that followed it, you cannot see one memorial without seeing the other.
As McCrae concluded his poem:
“Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
I had also written about the site “The Wall of Faces” which connects each name at the Vietnam Memorial to not only their picture but provides a place for others to leave their remembrances. It is a simple yet powerful way to connect each of the honored dead to a real person and the people they touched and left behind.
It’s not just we Americans who commemorate our dead. There is an excellent story on CNN.com from last year about the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margarten, Netherlands. The cemetery holds some 8,000 American servicemen who died in WW II. Each grave has been adopted by a Dutch family that tends it and often reaches out back to America to the dead soldier’s family.
The twist?
Some 80 years later, there’s a waiting list of nearly 1,000 residents for a grave they can adopt.
Thank you, Margarten.
Geeze the air is dusty today
I didn’t really know what to do yesterday. There were things I could do, like visit a cemetery, find a grave and thank a stranger. That would seem…performative, though. Like I was doing it to evade some measure of guilt. I’m grateful, of course. All those men, finding themselves facing fire and steel and walking into it, for the guys next to them, for their people back home, for their own sense of themselves. It’s tough to imagine.
I think Americans have lost their ability to mourn in public, or more lost a sense of public solemnity. Commemorations of Vietnam, of 9/11, of World War II, or of any loss that affects all of us, seem mawkish and maudlin. They still sing “God Bless America” in the seventh inning stretch. They roll out the flag at football games, trot out the honor guard, mixing something that should be hallowed with the broad, common American thirst for entertainment. They make the coaches wear camo in November. And on and on.
I don’t want that. Trump, Vance, and Hegseth at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, silently keeping it together, saluting that resting place, laying a wreath, retreating. That’s what I want. Contemplation.
So I drove around yesterday. I lived one day as a free man, knowing other people paid for me to be able to do it. It’s what I’ll do on Independence Day, in addition to reading the Declaration of Independence. I’m done with fireworks. I know this country was born in blood and fire; I don’t need to be entertained by the symbolism of it.
Maybe to some among the living it’s not enough. Maybe to some among the dead it is.