The wind whips and pops each flag, metal and metal collide, while the trumpet sounds Taps. If you listen with your heart, can you see the weary soldier, trudging through the sand, the jungle, the desert? Can you hear the artillery, the quickened heartbeat? Can you smell the gun powder, the sweat, the fear? While we stand, solemn and stoic, the service members who have given their lives for our freedom are able to rest in peace. It is our privilege to live, our duty to remember, our responsibility to ask, our legacy to share.
This is the second of two Memorial Services we attend each year. It is the one in which we meet as a family after the last note of Taps, at the grave of my Grandparents. All family members who can attend, do.
This year, I went over to a friend before going to my family. We walked hand in hand, my son and I, as the wind whipped the flags and our hair. He knows, at only 4, that her father is passed, and he asks again, just to be sure. Today, she is there, standing alone, her husband, not too far off; but her siblings, noticeably absent. They are with her mother, in the hospital, as she fights a huge health battle. She is here, on behalf of her mother, keeping family tradition, honoring her father.
I hold her in my arms, noticing the strength and power I have somehow gathered, that, today, she is mysteriously without. I keep her there, in my arms, a good, long while. So much so that it bothers my son, as he doesn’t often see us in this position. He mostly sees her as the authority figure in his life, when we are at work, she is his daycare provider. As my friend, when she and I visit, we don’t linger too long when tears are on the edge.
Except today. For this is the entire purpose of the day. To memorialize those who are gone, and to honor the ones who can still stand. To hold up our brothers and sisters who battle along beside us.
Finally, the embrace ends, and I hurry her off to be with her mother. When I arrive at the grave of my grandparents, I say aloud, “Don’t leave me”.
There are strange looks, a question or two. None offering a consolation .
They can never know the flash I had I my mind, the sobering thoughts of the Memorial a days to come. Even now, we are not all present. Those who live out of state can’t always make it back; those who have other services to attend, those who struggle still, with the ache from the loss of a dear loved one. The worry is real for me, as time wears on and we all get more busy and hours grow short for the elders; will my generation rise up and take the helm? Will we share with our children the memories of the past, and glorify them as precious and treasured? Will we bring them here, year after year, to mourn the two people who created this huge circle of love? Or will the circle grow smaller, closing in on the stone which lists their names? Seeing my friend standing alone broke my heart – not just for her, but for my future as well. I know one day, if I’m ever standing at my family stone alone and she sees it, she will hug me in that same, loving way.
© amysara and TheRFarm.
© amysara and TheRFarm.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to amysara and TheRFarm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to amysara and TheRFarm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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