This is one of those days that the subject is difficult to introduce. I've been thinking alot about Memorial Day, not making plans, don't have any plans, just thinking about it. I remember when I was in the Philippines and one of the ministers there told me about a day when everyone went to the cemetery and made special "picnic type" food and he described it as quite pagan, very much like Memorial Day in America. It's always interesting to hear someone in another country refer to our pagan rituals, because we in America are sure that our traditions are anything but pagan. I know this day began to be set aside to remember those that died in war, but now that we know there is no end to war. . . How can we observe this day without keeping it just an open, never healing wound? And as Memorial Day evolved into remembrance all of our deceased loved ones, we know that everyone has dead ancestors, so again, we observe the perpetuity of death. As a bereaved parent, that gets to hear other's perspectives of how awful it must be, or some stupid comment that is supposed to be well meaning, I just can't imagine wanting to have a picnic after a visit to the cemetery, and with whom would I spend this "festival of lament?" I've never felt that personal emotions about death were necessary to share, and I never felt close enough to any other human being that shared the loss, to share the emotions. I know people that take flowers, even elaborate decorations to adorn the cemetery, but the comment I heard in the Philippines won't ever go away. But there's more to this than that, it's the fact that war is now memorialized into something good. I think of over 3,000 American families that have lost a son or daughter in that travesty in the Middle East, and I'm sickened and sad for them. I hear the rally cry for more war from the Bush followers and I wonder, are their young men and women in the service, or is that duty for the children and grandchildren of others? This year seems particularly inappropriate, as the Iraq situation is planned to intensify, Iran is no longer on a back burner and obviously getting ready to boil over, the Reagan Diaries are in the news, and he was not in the service, but he made training films and so he does appear in uniform . . . And the 100th birthday of John Wayne is in the news, another man that "embodied the American spirit" but never donned an American uniform, other than in the movies. Our nation has glorified war and presented it to be somehow virtuous, by statements like "fighting for our freedom" "dying that others can live in freedom" "fighting for democracy" "paying the ultimate sacrifice" when we now see the sad reality, that there is no end to the war America started. A picnic hardly seems appropriate and flowers by a head stone, I find to be terribly insufficient.
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed. Lamentations of Holy Scripture
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