MEMORIAL DAY

Of all of the holidays our country celebrates, none has more meaning for me than Memorial Day. That’s because, except for the obvious being its meaning is to honor our war dead and those who survived, it’s also the start of another summer season. Here in the Midwest we tend to bookend the fairest of our four seasons with Memorial Day and Labor Day—the alpha and the omega of summer. But we need to keep that as a subliminal message lest we forget the true meaning of Memorial Day.

Not being a veteran, I have often wondered what it was like to leave your families and loved ones, and to go off to some far off place to defend our way of life. One thinks about our children and how we often have such a short time to live with them before they go out on their own. Many times, veterans give up a substantial part of that time to try to keep the peace this world so sorely needs; a time they will never get back; a time they wanted so much to share with their life’s partner and kids. But it goes far deeper than that when you have to take up arms because someone has taken up arms against you. It’s then that so many of our young protectors can be taken from us, and never get the chance to become a parent. Yes, they gave up far more than just their lives. Let’s not forget the survivors, too, as many of the survivors suffer immeasurably, having seen the horrors of war.

The world has long prayed for peace, asked for peace, and even begged for an end to aggression and hostilities. But there have always been those amongst us in this world that selfishly don’t want us to have that freedom and way of life. They want to dominate us and force their convoluted way of life on free people. Thank God we have had the will to stand up to them in the past, or this world would be hell on earth without their efforts. Thank God, also, that there are those who, in the words of Isaiah in the good book, took heed when it said, “They will bend their plowshares into swords. Their spears into pruning hooks against nations.” Our creator knew there would be threats, and knew all too well we had no decent choice but to respond against them, and fight back, or this world would get far uglier than we could possibly imagine.

As for that lasting peace we all want. That same chapter of the Bible talks about it as part and parcel of that same verse. To be sure it has, in our lifetimes, proved to be very elusive. I have the feeling that it will always be difficult to attain, and we will have to always remain vigilant. That is exactly what our brave service men and women are doing today for all of us. We lose our awareness of this way too easily in this world today. We must never forget their service to, not only our country, but also to all of us. I have in my mind today a picture I saw of a young widow lying face down sobbing on the green grass of a grave in a veterans cemetery, her toddler child looking on bewildered, way too young to realize what it, too, had lost. The father he/she will never remember. Let us not forget them, also.

So, this Memorial Day, let’s give credit where credit is due. Let’s not let Memorial Day be just the start of another summer season, and another four-day weekend.