We celebrate holidays now that are dated for the convenience of the potentates in Washington and other employees of the government - keep in mind, we work for them, not them for us.
So, in accordance with that thought, I think of and celebrate - most often privately - holidays on their actual days or very close thereto.
Memorial Day has traditionally been May 30 - yesterday.
It was officially celebrated Monday, to make a long weekend for our populace that is now become totally used to bread and circuses.
Very often, it seems, Memorial Day gets confused with Veterans Day which started out as Armistice Day. Sometimes, in connection with Memorial Day you hear references to "poppies" and "Flanders Field."
Those are both Armistice Day (November 11, which became Veterans Day) references. But inaccuracy and sloppiness, both in language and facts, is the hallmark of our times. No one really cares, just as long as the ice cream is cold and there is enough titillation on the TV.
In short, Veterans Day honors chiefly those men and women who have served in the Armed Forces -- that is, emphasis on the living.
Memorial Day is reserved for those who died while serving, thus "memorial" -- to remember those who are gone.
After the Civil War people went to graves of soldiers and decorated them. When I was a little boy -- a million years ago in terms of what life was like then as opposed to now -- it was often called "Decoration Day." In the South, the remembrance was often celebrated on April 26, but May 30 now seems to have overridden all that (except for a few soreheads - Hi Charlie!).
You might be interested to know that war is not a clean shoot 'em up bang-bang fall dead exercise.
It literally tears men to pieces. It literally drives men and I guess women, too, these days, to the brink of insanity. To go through an artillery or mortar barrage is to bring anxiety to the highest level possible.
Most guys -- and I say guys because that is who chiefly was involved until recently -- who have seen the worst of it seldom talk about it. It is something that can never be shut out of their minds, but talking about it brings lots of the horror to life.
These soldiers, sailors and airmen of combat often come back bewildered, wondering, "why am I alive and others dead?" It is a haunting thought.
Think of those who died in these terrible ways in terms of your own life. Would you like to have been living in the open, not bathing, not shaving, not eating right, deprived of all privacy and subject at any moment to a horrifying wound? Death, in many cases, is better.
Think of yourself as a youngster with everything ahead, and then substitute the abyss of nothingness (in terms of this world) in place of those dreams.
It is always interesting to reflect on what it is that gives a person courage to do the things that we automatically shrink from when we contemplate it. "Oh, Lord, I could not do that," is what many think; but then, many did what seems impossible and lived through it.
But this is about the dead and their deaths, their sacrifice paid in the greatest measure for what we have in our country.
For those who died it is never about flag and country. It is about comrades and love. Those in combat go at risk and often to death for those in the unit. It is not about politics, so when a government, rightly or wrongly, orders in effect the deaths of youths, those who make the sacrifice must never be held responsible.
They obeyed and in their obedience died for all of us.
The words on the Cenotaph in London I have always felt were
heartbreaking. They go like this:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them; We shall never forget them.
The best we can do is to remember them, again, this Memorial Day.
