Memorial Day didn't start as a day to honor veterans who "died for our freedom." Ironic, because the last war fought "for our freedom" before WWII, was the Civil War. We had a lot of wars in the 19th century, most of which we ignore: the Spanish American War, the Mexican War, the war in the Philippines, the war in Panama, all the imperialist efforts Mark Twain decried and Henry Thoreau protested. Memorial Day was not a day to remember we'd won our freedom at the expense of others; it was a day simply to remember dead family members, those who had died in the Civil War. It started with ladies in the South, after the Civil War. They had done it before the war ended, and after the war they honored the Union dead as well as the Confederate dead. They honored the living by honoring the dead.
Now we set aside the dead, except as abstractions who "won" our "freedom." They "died for our freedom." Is that what the crosses mean?
Bollocks. Our freedom wasn't threatened in Vietnam, or Korea, in the Persian Gulf, either time we fought there in the last 20 years. It wasn't threatened by the sinking of the Maine or in the Philippines, either. It was threatened in the Civil War, and Memorial Day came from that conflict. Memorial Day is simply a day to honor the dead. Perhaps we would better to limit it to the dead we know, and if we don't know any war dead, to be respectful of those who do. Perhaps we would do better to remember the uncut hair of graves, and to visit a graveyard and remember these dead were once as young and fair as you, or me. I am old and cranky now, but I am sure we used to be more mature about these things.
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
row zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.--Walt Whitman
"The beautiful uncut hair of graves." We used to put our graves beside our churches, so we knew where our dead were. Now in our sanitary ways, and our sanity, we keep them as far from the beaten path as possible; along with our hospitals, our nursing homes, our "funeral homes." We don't want to be reminded of death, unless it is on TV, and involves the death of "bad people." Or just the unknown faceless ones; not our friends; not our neighbors; not, ironically, our families.
The Gettysburg Address should be linked to Memorial Day, too. It was written, after all, to commemorate a graveyard, and the dead who died in battle and lay there now.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.
Lincoln praised those who died in a valiant struggle to preserve the union, to keep the nation from ending.
"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,/And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps./ What do you think has become of the young and old men?/What do you think has become of the women and children?" I think: "A wise man who speaks his mind calmly is more to be heeded than a commander shouting orders among fools." I think: "Wisdom is better than weapons of war, and one mistake can undo many things done well." (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18, NEB)
I think this is a day to praise famous women and men, and for believers to remember their Creator, and to honor the dead not for what they fought for, but because they, too, were God's children.
Let us now sing the praises of famous men,
all the heroes of our nation's history,
through whom the Lord established his renown,
and revealed his majesty in each succeeding age. Some held sway over kingdoms
and made themselves a name by their exploits.
Others were sage counsellors,
who spoke out with prophetic power.
Some led the people by their counsels
and by their knowledge of the nation's law;
out of their fund of wisdom they gave instruction.
Some were composers of music or writers of poetry.
Others were endowed with wealth and strength,
living peacefully in their homes.
All these won fame in their own generation
and were the pride of their times.
Some there are who have left a name behind them
to be commemorated in story.
There are others who are unremembered;
they are dead, and it is as though they had never existed,
as though they had never been born
or left children to succeed them.
Not so our forefathers; they were men of loyalty,
whose good deeds have never been forgotten.
Their prosperity is handed on to their descendants,
and their inheritance to future generations.
Thanks to them their children are within the covenants-
the whole race of their descendants.
Their line will endure for all time,
and their fame will never be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives for ever.
Nations will recount their wisdom,
and God's people will sing their praises.
--Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15, NEB
My uncle fought in World War II; with the French Resistance, if memory serves. Or maybe not. Maybe that was a grand embellishment by the family, or my own early imagination. He never said anything about the war, or about war, to me; except once.
I went to visit him after I'd married and his kids, my age, my cousins I all but grew up with, had all married, too. So it was just my wife and I and my aunt and uncle. He picked us up at the airport. I was reading Studs Terkel's then new book "The 'Good' War." The quotes around good weren't too apparent in the cover design, and he asked me what I was reading this time (in those days I was always reading). When I showed it to him, and told him it was about World War II, he said, "I didn't think there was such a thing as a 'good' war." And he smiled; the kind of smile that always made me think he knew much more about much more than I did, or ever would. A smile of experience, but of deep, painful knowledge he would never unlock and share again.
My brother-in-law fought in Vietnam. When everybody else was going to college so as not to get drafted, he volunteered. He was Green Beret, and a Captain. He never told me anything about Vietnam, either, except that when he first arrived there it was the most beautiful country he'd ever seen. And within 10 minutes, he knew the U.S. had no business being there. But he did his job; he followed orders. He was a good soldier, and he's one of the finest men I know. He's as kind, generous, and open-minded as anyone can be.
I have a recording of the "Airborne Symphony," by Marc Blitzstein. Maybe it's the first performance, because the narrator is Orson Welles. I always think of it this time of year, because the most poignant part of the libretto is the section about bombs, and the cities destroyed by planes. It's "The Ballad of the Cities." The narrator reads a partial list of cities destroyed by bombs, but the music moves into the "Morning Poem" with the chorus singing plaintively and repeatedly: "Call the names. Call the names. Call the names."
It always seems to me the only appropriate observance of Memorial Day. Call the names.
PEACE
O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
Arise, O Christ, and help us,
And deliver us for thy Name's sake.
AMEN.
O Christ, when thou didst open thine eyes on this fair earth, the angels greeted thee as the Prince of Peace and besought us to be of good will one toward another; but thy triumph is delayed and we are weary of war.
SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.
O Christ, the very earth groans with pain as the feet of armed men march across her mangled form.
SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.
O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life, not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.
TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.
O Christ, come to us in our sore need and save us; 0 God, plead thine own cause and give us help, for vain is the help of man.
SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.
O Christ of God, by thy birth in the stable, save us and help us;
By thy toil at the carpenter's bench, save us and help us;
By thy sinless life, save us and help us;
By thy cross and passion, save us and help us.
SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.
Then all shall join in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
--The E&R Hymnal
