Prior to our next post following up on soliciting right track/wrong track/tough topic feedback, allow us to pause for a moment for Memorial Day. I’ll be honest; sometimes our federal holidays don’t prompt in me the reflection and forethought they deserve. For example…
On the 4th of July, I don’t always find myself pondering and giving thanks for our nation’s Declaration of Independence from British rule…
Labor Day signifies more to me the official end to summer than any thought of the working people who have added to the strength and well-being of our country…
And Columbus Day? Yes, I’ve seen the appeal by some to change its name to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” And while I wish for all heritage to be honored, with truly all due respect, I’m pretty sure that floating Monday in October will remain a day where my primary awareness is having an extra day off in an otherwise busy week.
Not so, no less, with today. Well, tomorrow actually…
Observed every year on the last Monday of May is Memorial Day, a day in which we honor and remember those who have died serving in the United States Armed Forces. The day is less commonly called “Decoration Day,” denoting the practice of adorning the grave of a fallen soldier.
151 years ago — a wild thought to even imagine — then Ohio congressman, former general, and future President James Garfield addressed a crowd of 5,000 at Arlington National Cemetery for the first Decoration Day exercises. I love how he starts with how any actual speech on this day far pales in comparison to who we honor on the day…
“I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot…
I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost; that the characters of men are molded and inspired by what their fathers have done… Each for himself gathered up the cherished purposes of life — its aims and ambitions, its dearest affections — and flung all, with life itself, into the scale of battle.
… If each grave had a voice to tell us what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand, with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war. We should hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at Manassas fell like an eclipse on the Nation; that another died of disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell on the field… The voices of these dead will forever fill the land like holy benedictions…”
As with other national holidays, it is easy to transform the meaning of a holiday into something seemingly lesser. In fact, I love the thought that Memorial Day is simultaneous with the start of summer — the fun, frolic, rest and relaxation that comes with the season.
But let us not forget those who “flung all, with life itself, into the scale of battle.” Let us not forget the silent tenants of those graves.
Let us first pause and give thanks before any summer festivity, ensuring those heroic sacrifices are never lost. Those men and women, who died while serving, did what they did then so you and I could do what we do now.
That is worth always remembering.
Respectfully…
AR