Memorial Day: mourning and honoring
Before Memorial Day became a national three-day weekend in 1971 and the official kickoff to summer festivities, it was Decoration Day.
I’m not all that ancient, but my earliest recollection of the holiday is of the latter name. It was a day on which people brought flowers and flags to graves of the war dead, and maybe held a parade featuring some tottering old vets and their strange hats.
One also might be stopped by an elderly gentleman selling a poppy. Not a real poppy, but one made of crepe paper. This somehow had to do with the whole thing as well, but exactly how I didn’t know. That mystery was cleared up in fifth grade, when our poetry-forcefeeding teacher (see this) made us memorize the poem “In Flanders Fields:”
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place…
The poppies had to do with mourning for the dead, this much I knew, and the poem related to a huge battle of World War I, a war that was never given much attention in our American history classes (I had to learn about it on my own, later). Like much of the poetry we learned in grade school, the poem isn’t good poetry; it’s really propaganda verse. But as such it gets its message across loud and clear.
That message is of loss and mourning for the war dead, true enough. But the larger message is that they died for a reason, and the corollary is that mourning them is an empty exercise if it doesn’t take account of the context of their sacrifice and follow through on it:
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…
Call it jingoistic, call it hawkish, call it simplistic. But it points out something I’ve been thinking of this Memorial Day, and that is that although mourning the loss of the war dead is absolutely part of the day, that’s not the same as honoring them.
There’s enormous disagreement on how best to do this “honoring.” Some think protests at Memorial Day parades is the best way to “support the troops.” Some (and I am among them) agree with President Bush when he said in a Memorial Day speech at Arlington: “Our duty is to make sure this war was worth the sacrifice.” And part of that process is to continue to have the will to do so, and to change tactics when necessary and give a new approach time to work.
Yesterday I saw a special on Fox News about a group of 80-something WWII vets returning to the beaches of Normandy where they had landed on D-Day. One of the things that caused these tough old guys to tear up as they gazed at the now-tranquil sands of Omaha was speaking of the memory of their comrades who had died all too young on those beaches. The other was receiving the tributes from the locals, including young people who had no personal memory of the terrible ordeal that was WWII. One of the vets waved his hand at the group of smiling children and said that this, this was why we did it.
[This is a repeat of a post from last year.]
Good thing to repeat.
When I was a kid my grandmothers both put flowers on the graves of all our dead relatives on Memorial Day. It was about everyone.
I truly believe that all of my people I lost while in the cav 1968 -1969 would have wanted us to be happy for ourselves and them. They gave thenselves for that
The implications and reverberations of the loss of our young, brave souls who are cut down in wars is something very difficult for a society such as ours to deal with.
Our lives are filled with such ease, such possibilities, such hope for the future. When a young life ends in such a society, the loss is often incomprehensible for those left behind.
It is not incomprehensible for me. In Vietnam I lost six friends and shipmates. There was no time to mourn or come to grips with those losses. We were too busy trying to stay alive ourselves. After the war there was mainly anger because we had not fought to win.
A few years later two more squadronmates died in an operational accident. This time I met the families, tried to comfort them, tried to make sense of it. I didn’t do a very good job. But who can do more than just try to help families who have lost their sons, brothers, grandchildren, or nephews? I searched for answers and wished I had some really good ones. But I didn’t.
Then it was my turn. My son died at age twenty in a mountain climbing accident. He was a strong, talented climber who lived to climb. The accident was so improbable. He was too good at climbing for the accident to have happened. But it did.
It changed our lives. Crushed flat by grief, we were. In the depths of grief I remembered the families in my home town who had lost sons in WWII. I knew there was sadness in those homes, but I had no idea of the width and depth of the pain. I remembered the families of my squadronmates and knew why my efforts to comfort them were so difficult.
With the help of many caring people, some divine intervention, and tincture of time my wife and I crawled out of the depths to fashion a life without our son.
Parents who lose children are like amputees. We have lost a part of ourselves. Every morning when we wake up we know there is a part of us missing. At first it takes immense effort to get up and go on. In time, and with effort we get stronger and the effort is not so great, but the sense of loss remains. Our son died 29 years ago, but the sense of some part of us missing remains.
And so it is for those who have lost sons and daughters in war. It matters not whether the cause is just. It still hurts. And probably hurts worse if, like Cindy Sheehan, you do not think the cause is just. That is why I feel compassion for Cindy even though I disagree with her assessment of the war.
A few things have guided my thinking as I have come to terms with all these losses, not only of my son, but of my fellow Naval aviators. I have come to understand that living in a state of constant grief and anger does no good. And it particularly does no honor to the memories of those you have lost. The greatest tribute you can make to the fallen is to stand up and live life vigorously and with as much joy as possible. I now often think of my son or my friends when I am enjoying a grand view, a wonderful piece of music, a fine meal, or an inspiring piece of writing. In a way it feels as if I’m sharing it with them.
War is hell. I and many others have been scarred for life by it. And yet it is not the worst of things. Two years ago I was in Russia. It’s a country with immense resources and talented, smart people. And yet it is still not the country that it could be. The remnants of the old Soviet system are still casting a pall over the people. Ten years ago I was in Kenya and Tanzania. Again, both countries with immense natural resources and good people who work hard. But they are held back by kleptocratic governments that keep the people mired in poverty that you can’t believe until you see it. Living in countries where hope wanes, where freedom is in name only, and where there is no chance to reach for higher goals must be like merely going through the motions of life. Unfortunately, that is what happens in far too many countries of the world.
I’m not smart enough to know if taking the offensive against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq will be successful; turning those countries into free, prosperous nations. But when I look at what happened in Germany, Japan, and South Korea with our help, I think it was well worth trying to change things in the ME. As a person who reads the milblogs I know our warriors who are over there believe it is a good thing.
Today we remember our fallen warriors. We honor their memories by living life to the fullest and by protecting freedom. They gave their all so we could do so. May God bless them and their families who miss them still. And may God bless America.
There are two additional factors that make loss of a child so traumatic to modern westerners: they have too few children, often only one, and they do not believe in afterlife.
I recently made some research of my family genealogy, and found that in my grandfather’s generation it was a norm to have as many children as biologically possible. And loss of children to infections also was a norm: my grand-grandfather, a medical doctor, had 11 children, of whom 2 died in infancy.
And in Russian peasant families infant mortality was much worse, due to poor hygiene and frequent famines, up to 50% in most regions. How did our ancestors cope with it? They were deeply religious and fatalists. And they also tried not to have too close emotional ties with their children, knowing that they can have lost them every day.
sergey What’s your view of the Chinese today… especially taking into account the One Child Policy and the extensive death caused by the earthquake
sergey: They tried, but quite often they failed.
When I was reading about the life of Tolstoi and his wife (and what a story that is!), I was struck by how utterly devastated they both were by the loss of one of their children:
Between 1863 and 1888, Sophia gave birth to 13 children, only eight of whom lived to adulthood. Exhausted by pregnancy and motherhood, she tried to sell Tolstoy on the idea of birth control, but he refused. At her wit’s end, Sophia tried unsuccessfully to abort her 12th pregnancy. Yet once her children were born, she loved them all deeply. In one of the most poignant photos in the book, she leans against the shrine she built in memory of Vanechka, her youngest child, who died of scarlet fever at the age of 6.
And then there’s this poem by Ben Jonson, about his own struggle to be more philosophical and religious about the death of his son.
Chinese culture is so distant from everything we can imagine that I do not dare have any judgement about it. The only thing I know for sure that they are even more fatalists than Russian peasants, if this is humanly possible. May be, Buddist doctrine of reincarnation is more potent pain-killer than Judeo-Christian apocalyptic vision of Resurrection. Otherwise Japans would not have had so romantic attitude to death.
Neo, Leo Tolstoy and Sophia were not Russian peasants nor even Christians in authentic sense of the word. They were westernized humanists, never able to come to terms with transience and injustice of the life. This made them neurotics with hyperinflated ego, like most nowadays liberals.
I disagree that mourning children was limited to people such as Tolstoi and his wife. I forget the references and have not been able to find them online, but there’s a great deal of evidence that people of many stripes and backgrounds mourned the loss of children bitterly despite the fact that it was more commonplace back then, and despite the fact that they believed strongly in an afterlife.
Religions try to comfort us, but it’s widely acknowledged that the loss of a child is especially difficult in most cultures. That’s why peasants in Mediterranean countries, for example, have all sorts of amulets to ward off the evil eye from taking the children.
Fear of evil eye is widespread in Russia, too. And, of course, grief is universal, but ways to cope with it differ from culture to culture, and in some they are much more efficient than in others.