ON MEMORIAL DAY

Today is Memorial Day, the day we are taught to remember our war dead and to honor their sacrifice.

Except of course that for the most part, we don't remember them. Unless they were family or friend they are anonymous. We cannot know them in death for we did not know them in life. We do not see them, we do not gaze into their eyes at the moment of death. We replace them with sterile symbols, with headstones, flags, medallions, plaques, and other ritual cenotaphs. We gaze upon row after row of identical graves, devoid of identity as they are of life, and pretend that we remember the men and women lying underneath, even though we cannot know a single second of the lives they lived and lost.

So, why did they die? It is a very complex question and we are given simple answers, indeed single words suffice to explain the ending of a human life. The words are "freedom", or "democracy", but on reflection, the words do not explain the reality of death under gunfire.

The reality is that Memorial Day is a day when we are supposed to forget. We are supposed to forget those we knew and loved and how they were torn from our families then to be torn to bloody bits upon the field.We are supposed to forget the greed and avarice of our leaders masked in lies and deception that sent young men and women to be killed and crippled upon fields not covered with glory but with blood, fear, and savaged anatomy. We are supposed to forget all of that, and make do with those sterile and empty symbols that take the place of the truth, that we may close our eyes to the suffering and pain we create by closing our eyes to the greed and avarice of our leaders. We are never supposed to remember those who died in wars, lest we feel sympathy for them and their families, and falter as out leaders march our young people off to the next war.

So, on this Memorial Day, relax. Admire the plaques, enjoy the music, have your beer and hot dogs, go to the beach or picnic, and forget. Forget that underneath each clean white headstone lies the remains of a real human being who died for reasons you were never told, and whose passing brought pain and anguish to a family that did nothing to deserve it.

Forget.

For that is what Memorial Day is truly for.