It’s Memorial Day weekend. The campgrounds are full, the picnic areas are overflowing and in certain areas of the country, the backyard pool is finally open, which for me is a treat because the weather here has been more like July that May. It’s a time for family and friends to get together and enjoy the official beginning of the summer season.
While I was in line at the IGA picking up beer and hot dog buns for the weekend, I heard a woman lament that people have forgotten that it is a day set aside to remember the fallen heroes of our military past and present. We’ve forgotten what Memorial Day is all about.
So for this, my first blog, I thought I’d offer this reminder.
No one knows when Memorial Day began. In 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared the birthplace of Memorial Day to be Waterloo, NY, but there are dozens of towns across the country that would dispute that claim and rightfully so. People have always remembered and honored their military dead to keep the memory of their heroism alive.
It was General John A. Logan who proclaimed the day to be May 30 in 1868, but it wasn’t until after the First World War that the country began commemorating as a whole. In 1971 an Act of Congress changed the day to the last Monday in May as part of the National Holiday Act, giving us all three days to get sunburned, eat too many hot dogs and drink too much beer and perhaps attend a parade and lay a few memorial wreaths.
For those whose loved ones have made that ultimate sacrifice for their country, no special day is necessary. Those men and women will be remembered every single day with honor and pride in the hearts of those who knew and loved them. For the rest of us, it is meet and right that we take a moment from our busy weekend to bow our heads and say a prayer or simply stand in silence with respect for those who sacrificed so much. It is also our obligation as Americans to tell our children why we do so. Those little paper poppies that are handed out at intersections in every town all over the country are a good way to begin that conversation.
They were the brainchild of a woman named Moina Michael back in 1915. She was inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields“written by a battlefield surgeon in WWI. This short poem has always been a favorite of mine and I find myself reciting it each time I roll down my window to receive my flower and make my donation. For me, these simple words say it all.
As for celebrating with family and friends in love and laughter being disrespectful of the dead and the meaning of the day? I don’t think so. If those that sacrificed their lives could speak to us once again, I think they’d tell us that this was “the torch from failing hands we throw”; a torch that gives us the freedom to celebrate without fear of reprisals or persecution because of our individual beliefs. This is what they died for: you and me and the freedom to pursue happiness. What better way to do that than with family and friends?
If our honored dead could walk amongst us one more time, I think they’d be the first in line to say, “Put another burger on that grill and pass me a beer!” For isn’t it the simplest of pleasures we miss so much when they are taken away?
Our celebrations ‘do not break faith with us who died’. We have caught the torch and it is ours to hold it high. God Bless those that carried it before us and God Bless those that carry it for us now. God Bless America and everyone who has the great good fortune to live in it.
Have a safe and happy Memorial Day,
Jackie
