Memorial Day – 2013

Last year on Memorial Day I was stuck in Afghanistan, and the year prior I was not blogging yet.  This year I felt compelled to add a more well-written addition to the constellation of posts I like to deviate from ranting with.

Fort Leavenworth Cemetery
Photo by Author

Make no mistake here: Memorial Day is not a holiday dedicated to the living.  Briefly, the holiday was created after aggregating several popular remembrance days across our nation.  Predominantly, it formalized what was known as Decoration Day, a product of the American Civil War, our most costly war in terms of lives lost.  Later, Congressional action fixed the day on the last Monday of May, shifting it from the 30th of that month.  Traditionally, one should fly the American flag at half-staff until noon to honor those who have died in the service of our country.  At noon, the flag is raised to full height, symbolically showing our collective resolve to continue fighting for liberty and freedom.

Many surviving Veterans believe that moving the holiday simply to create a long weekend has shifted the focus away from what is important – sacrifice – to other more fleeting pursuits.  Our media don’t help much here, and I expect to hear about the road-death statistics and sound bytes of angry vacationers stuck in traffic or bumped from anticipated flights.  So be it.  I personally don’t watch a lot of news and I also don’t care so much what you do this weekend because the fact that you’re free to relax this weekend and have fun is a fitting celebration of what Memorial Day is really about.

Memorial Day is about the dead.  It should be about the dead and for them.  In another post, I made a rough estimate of 1.34 million people who died in military service over the history of our country.  American blood has nourished the soil all over the world, and much of it – most of it in fact – bought freedom and liberty right here in America itself.

Bought.  There’s a word.  It summarizes what this holiday is about.  It is the notion that someone decided our ideals and way of life are worth living for and, therefore, worth dying for.  They swallowed their fear, left their loved ones and marched, sailed, rode and flew off somewhere far away.  They fought, they suffered, they killed and they died.  Many of them lie under distant lands’ soil still, a solemn reminder that Americans will not quietly submit to the will of others.  They testify in silence to the notion that we value our way of life dearly.  They prove with their own remains that we will literally give ourselves so that others might not suffer tyranny and oppression.  They bought freedom.  They paid with their lives.

I don’t get upset over the focus we have on Memorial Day.  I have always liked to think that we can go to the beach, or enjoy the backyard party, take the vacation, or have fun in the theme park precisely because those very locations and activities have long been bought and paid for.  To my mind, it makes the ice cream that much sweeter.