Memorial Day time to honor others, fine-tune your own legacy
Anyone who has lost a beloved — whether through the ravages of time, illness, accident, crime or war — can vividly recall precise details of that wrenching moment and the sense that life was deeply and forever changed. But regardless of how much that moment personally sears us, practically everyone is also taken aback by how little an individual death is noted by the outside world.
On the saddest day of our lives, other people still hurry off to work, kids still laugh on the school bus, and planes still arrive more or less on time. The “signs” of good fortune that we rely on — fair weather, smooth traffic, hot coffee — fail. The sun can shine as brightly on the day of a funeral as it does on the day of a birth. The heavens do not weep for us, so we must weep for, and remember, each other.
Memorial Day, in the strictest sense, is the day we honor our soldiers who have died in battle. The original soldiers commemorated were those who died in the Civil War. The first major observation of the day, originally known as Decoration Day, took place on May 30, 1868. Over 20,000 graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers were decorated in Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1921, Congress approved a resolution that provided for the burial at Arlington of an unidentified American soldier killed in World War I. Subsequently, three other unidentified soldiers, respectively from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, have also been buried in the tomb. One of the current highlights of the cemetery’s Memorial Day commemoration is the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It’s a fitting tribute to all the unsung, unidentified people who have died in our defense.
More personally, there are the people who have lived in our defense: Parents, brothers and sisters, partners and friends. On Memorial Day we honor the memory of the people who have touched and shaped our lives in the most consistent, loving ways. We honor, too, the hopes they held for us, the dreams they planted, the values they instilled. If those ideals are worth keeping, Memorial Day is a good day to run a personal inventory on how well we are living those ideals and to begin to right ourselves if we have gone off course.
There are other, unsung presences in our lives whose names we have forgotten or never knew, who passed through our lives only momentarily, but who also gave something enduring: The teacher who spent extra time with us when learning to read seemed impossible, the first employer who was willing to take a chance on an unskilled worker, the co-worker who always bought the Girl Scout cookies we peddled for our kids, the stranger who gave up his seat on the bus for our elderly aunt, the nurse who offered ice cream when our dying father could no longer bear the work of solid food.
Memorial Day provides the opportunity to not only offer thanks for these people but to ask ourselves if we are these kinds of people ourselves. And if not, why?
Given the commercial images that surround this holiday, it’s easy to see how someone could think of Memorial Day as simply the kickoff to summer or the chance to buy patio furniture on sale or to spend three days at the lake swatting mosquitoes and adjusting the TV antenna. But Memorial Day is more than that, more, too, than just an annual drop-off of a bundle of flowers on a grave that is unvisited the rest of the year.
More than anything, Memorial Day commemorates both the emotional need and the moral imperative to remember, to reflect on and to recommit to the things worth living and dying for. We deliberately, formally remember so that we, and future generations, will not mindlessly, casually forget. We are called to do this as individuals, as citizens and as a nation.
Are the things your loved ones taught you worth remembering? If so, have those lessons worked themselves into the fiber of the person you are today? Can you quiet your daily life down long enough to hear a legacy of love? Do your daily interactions with others honor this legacy? And if there is no such legacy, can you begin to create one now? How do you wish to be remembered by your closest friend and your oldest rival?
Are the things that soldiers once died for still worth dying for? Do our current actions worldwide honor our national legacy? Is it advisable for the basic and longstanding agreements on what constitutes humane treatment of prisoners of war to be rendered quaint by the times in which we live or the kind of enemy that we fight? Do we treat other nations the way that we would want to be treated? How do we wish to be remembered, both by our allies and our enemies?
There are no easy answers to life’s questions and each of us must find, and live with, our own answers. But it’s helpful to remember that although we may honor the death of our loved ones with flowers and tears of gratitude, we honor their lives by the way we live our own.