I Ain't No Senator's Son

A Final Reflection About Memorial Day

One final note about our Memorial Day memories posts which dropped on Monday and Tuesday. First, thank you all for the kind notes and stories (good or bad) about your own loved ones, or your own, service.

Normally, running this ever-expanding and never finished essay, attracts some negative comments of the ‘If you never served, you shouldn’t be writing about the troops’ variety. I was grateful that wasn’t the case this time around.

But one final thing occurred to me - too late to include in this year’s update - that I wanted to share.

We used the holiday Monday to spend most of the day in our backyard, Uma playing with friends, my wife in her garden. And I was trimming, cutting and separating a ton of tree branches we took down from a nearby leafy row. A new fence is going up soon, so we needed to clear the area.

I was sorting the trimmed branches into two piles - fire wood and yard waste. It took me a long time, but the day was warm and I had nowhere to be. I was listening to a playlist when CCR’s “Fortunate Son” came blasting through the speakers reminding me that it was, indeed, Memorial Day.

And I thought to myself, see, this would be a perfect moment to consider those sacrifices. Me and my family in our lovely backyard. Not buying mattresses or going to parades. Memorial Day should not be a - enthusiastic - holiday, right? Rather, a time to be somber and grateful.

This is a difficult mind-set for me, mainly because my father (and my uncle were he ever to talk about his service) would tell me that was nonsense. That there was never a good reason to remember dead soldiers. Somber or not.

He’d remind me that it would be better if Memorial Day didn’t exist at all, that we ought not have dead soldiers to memorialize.

What’s even more difficult to swallow is the understanding that sometimes - Often? Mostly? - it feels like my father was actually the naive one on this subject.

Because all too often it seems like war is not a hiccup, but a sad function of the human condition.

I figured I’d turn to my favorite monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, for some insight. He wrote: “We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs.”

It ain’t the bombs, my friends, it’s our hearts. Not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about the whole thing. I know how my heart feels. I know how my dad felt. But our history as human beings sure lends credibility to what Thich was saying.

* heavy sigh *

Another friend, my clear-eyed editor Susan, had to remind me (as editors do) that none of this - no matter how inevitable it feels - is reason to stop trying. Generation after generation after generation, just keep trying for peace.

Maybe it’s not Thich I should be turning to. Maybe it’s John Fogerty after all.

Yeah-yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
Hoo, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?"
Hoo, they only answer, "More, more, more, more"

Keep showing up, keep fighting. Pass it on. Pass it down.

I watch the group of kids chasing the dog around my yard for a few minutes, my wife - dirt under her fingernails - digging in the garden, and I think, even if I ain’t no millionaire’s son, I am pretty fortunate honestly.