(Memorial Day - 2018)
I’ve arrived this day… this Memorial Day… to the stunning beauty… and proof of the stunning sacrifice.
The Gardens of Stone at Willamette National Cemetary, the placards of metal attesting to the service of them all.
Flag upon flag… row upon row… the colors… green of the grass… white of the stones… bronze of the placards… red… white… and blue of the thousands upon thousands of small flags that can’t even begin to scratch the surface of repayment for that unpayable debt that we owe so many..
The wind blows, the clouds have moved away. The smells of newly cut grass, the sounds of a fountain… sprinklers share their water needed by the lawns covering those who gave their all.
The sun beats down on the faces of those who come to remember… to grieve… to think back… to recollect.
Children’s adventures, skinned knees… first day in school… that touchdown, that cheer, that first love, that graduation… their wives, their husbands, their children and loved ones of all description think back on what might have been… and could have been had they made it through…
And those lives… oh those many lives… snuffed out far, far too soon… in service of and to their country.
This is not and never will be a Day that should be devoted to store sales. Their blood demands better.
They’re missed, at least by some. I miss them all, but in the sense that each one of us who served and died in defense of this nation did so with an unbearable light of being that terrifies the darkness… the bright, shining essence of the blood shed by the young and the old who answered our Nation’s Call.
The sacrifice cannot be measured. But when I come here, I make the effort to try.
I ponder this as I speak to my brother who joined those here years ago. I look around… sometimes, a tear forms and falls unhindered to the hallowed ground where they rest.
The answers do not come. And again, the only certainly…
Is the deafening silence.
