Remembering the Long Dead

interior Valley Forge cabin beds

I do not know anyone who has lost their life in military service, though I do know several veterans of war.

Regardless of how one may feel about military activity, war or the systems for bringing people into the armed forces, the willingness to risk everything for the people of the United States of America is to be respected. My hope is that those lives are risked only when it’s absolutely necessary, because their losses weigh heavily on the people and uncertain futures they leave behind.

Despite having a father, brother and step-father, and several uncles, cousins and friends who’ve served, I didn’t grow up within a “military family” culture. In fact, the veterans I know best so rarely refer to their service that we could almost be forgiven for forgetting it ever occurred.

This, coupled with my penchant for linking present day events to historical ones, means that I tend to think more of the long dead soldiers on Memorial Day. The American Indians and enthusiastic officers of the French and Indian War, and the colonial farmers dying in stark cabins at Valley Forge, probably don’t have anyone placing wreaths and flags on their graves today. What would this part of the world look like today if they hadn’t died back then?

My inner-idealist hates the idea of war, and can’t understand why leaders, who sit comfortably behind desks and upon thrones, get to send children to their deaths. The fact that an 18 year-old, with a brain still developing and the potential to be a doctor, activist or parent, can get swept into and killed for something none of us understands, is terrifying to me. Knowing that my daughter might one day choose military service makes my heart drop.

But, warring behavior is deeply rooted in our social structures, and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe one of the best things we can do now is oppose any glorification of real-life hate and violence, whether it’s shoddy news media or gun ads in poor taste. War means so much more than soldiers fighting soldiers; war means bombing civilians, rape as a weapon and hunger. There is nothing glorious, nothing acceptable, in that.

I’ll step down from the soapbox now, and let you get back to what I hope is a day that makes the most of the freedoms we do have. Today, at least, let there be peace. Eat good food, hug your babes, drink a local brew. Remember the fallen vet from your block and the soldier who fell in 1778. Happy Memorial Day.

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