Memorial Day 2022

 

Memorial Day 2022

 

By law Memorial Day is celebrated on the last Monday of May, not to honor all veterans, but to honor those who gave their lives for our country.  Often Memorial Day is mistaken for Veterans Day, which falls on November 11 and honors veterans. 

 

Memorial Day began unofficially in 1868 in remembrance of those union soldiers lost in the Civil War, and was first called Decoration Day, as decoration, such as flowers were laid at the graves of the fallen.  Soon Memorial Day expanded to include all those Americans lost in battle.

 

At first it was celebrated on May 30, no matter on which day of the month May 30 fell, but now it is celebrated on the last Monday of May, which this year happens to be May 30.  Memorial Day did not become a federal holiday until 1971.

 

There are also memorial days to honor the Confederate dead, and those fall on different days in many southern states.

 

Memorial Day has a personal meaning for me.  It’s a time of reflection.  Although my father and I are obviously not among the fallen, we both went to war.  One member of our family, one of my cousins, was a B-29 pilot, whose plane went down in the Pacific and whose body was never found. His family felt the loss more deeply than I will ever understand.  I remember my mother crying when I was a child, more than a decade after he was gone.  His lost was still impossible for her to comprehend She had stories of what a fine man he was and told me time and again how much I would have enjoyed knowing him.

 

I had many friends die in Vietnam and some were lost, never to be found. Their families never knew what became of them and searched in vain, sometimes for years or decades, never knowing.

 

So many others fell in all our wars, but nothing comes close to the number lost in the Civil War, 620,000.  The list goes on and on, in war after war.

 

But the statistics are only cold numbers, impersonal statistics that fit on a page, but have no names or faces, and don’t bare the the un-statistical deep sorrows many families are forced to bear long after May 30 passes, the memories of brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, husbands, wives, all gone, their lives erased and only memories left of the smiles, the good times, the hearts and souls.  Gone forever. Unimaginable.

 

And it is not only our war dead I think of on this Memorial Day, but the millions of other lives senselessly lost in wars, and so many of them children. How can those left behind live on?

 

I grieve for all America’s loses, the heroes and the innocent.  I shed tears. I pray for their families and know that prayer does not erase even a tiny fraction of their pain.  My heart is broken and will never heal.