At this very moment, Somerville's Memorial Day Parade is passing in front of my house, with all its marching bands, sirens, and even the occasional cannon firing. Actually, the parade path winds the exact route I walk home from church, so following today's service I got to see a great deal of the goings on.
Which set me to wondering: How should one celebrate Memorial Day? Parades are wonderful things--the very fact that we have them is an obvious sign that the community supports and thanks its veterans. Parades also bring the community together briefly, and instill a sense of national pride in the citizenry, especially from the old (who are the primary participants in the parade) to the young (who are often most bedazzled by the spectacle). But there's no specific connection between parades and Memorial Day; after all, we have parades on many major holidays. And the parade can't be primarily about thanking the participants, although many active military personnel participate, because of the two holidays we dedicate to the Armed Forces it's Veteran's Day where we celebrate our current military force, and Memorial Day where we commemorate the fallen.
Indeed, viewed from a certain perspective, the way people generally choose to celebrate Memorial Day--with barbecues, pool openings, and general frivolity--is quite peculiar. If Memorial Day is meant to honor the memory of military personnel who are no longer among us, including those who died in the heat of battle, there's very little that could be more sobering. What could be more tragic than the thought of the many young men, years younger than I am now, who died on foreign shores, far from home, from the places they knew, and the people that they loved?
One could always say, I suppose, that they would want us to be happy, and that they would want us to enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice. That today of all days we should be happy, and remember the fallen well. Still, there is a powerful sadness in Memorial Day that isn't echoed in the cannon fire, and isn't reflected in the faces of the people watching the parade go by.
In the end, the only thing that I can find that ties them is their cause. Both soldiers on the battlefield and people cheering at a parade do what they do from a love of their country, and of what it represents. It seems strange to me that that should be it, but it's possible that nationalism and somber reflection have a difficult time occupying the same space.
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Memorial Day was actually Granna and Fafe's anniversary, I think perhaps May 29, where they married in a simple Methodist ceremony with only a few in attendance. So Memorial Day always reminds me of them and our parts in each others' lives.
Most particularly, having visited Gerstell Academy on Friday, where Lorraine Fulton is now working as middle school principal and where the mantra is "leadership" I'm pondering the benefits of such an elite (expensive) exclusionary education where every activity is undergirded by the notion of leadership and portraits of leaders of all kinds, colors, nations, sexes bedeck the walls.
What I noticed most -- the children of all ages walk up to visitors, shake hands, and introduce themselves. You guys eventually learned that -- I still pop up when an "adult" enters the room though it's getting harder to find folks more adulter than I. And leadership, well as a group I guess we could have rushed more headstrongly to the fore, though the concept of leadership through Grandmother Amy, Dad, Amy Ruth, and Mom couldn't have been more pronounced; Mom was afterall president of the hospital volunteers and president of the garden club -- offices woefully lacking in our working parent culture.
I suppose a student in a private school with only seventeen students in his/her class receives extra attention, special privileges of status, etc. No school is more elite than the one Irene is going to so I'll be eager to hear what she has to say about the advantages -- Tony's Dad went to that school, long ago.
I left Gersatll feeling that it would be ok to go there half the time, if you could go to a public school the rest of the time. Young Daniel Wellever down the block has matriculated there in 6th grade -- I just don't know.
Other memories -- I know only one son who died in war -- my friend Tracy's young son Nick, a career marine who died in Faluga (yuk, sounds like a fire-breathing whore.
Rog saw Apocolypse Now, commenting only that the soldiers he knew in Korea were high all the time like the characters in the movie. I thought it was a bad movie.
I don't think battles should be celebrated or re-enacted. I do think soldiers should be remembered and their lives celebrated, but I don't feel war offensive is a cause celebre.
Fafe has a flag by his grave - he wanted to fight, but his was the last great generation according to Tom Browka (?) -- and his war was WWII. I don't know what he thought about Korea.
So have a pensive Memorial Day. Remeber the good; surmount the bad.
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