Remembering on Memorial Day 2006

They died that we may be free
Vicki Robin
Memorial Day, 2006

Today is Memorial Day, memory day, the day we remember all who have given their lives to save their people from losing what is more precious than life, to protect and preserve family, land, ideals and dreams.

First and foremost we think of young men and women who died in American wars. They died horribly and too soon - by guns, knives, bombs, suffocation, torture, starvation, poison, drowning and finally, if the war they fought haunts and hounds them into civilian life, suicide. Perhaps before they died a love they’d never known – for comrades, ideals, the present moment – entered them and exalted them. Probably, though, they were numb, terrified, cowardly and ashamed, out of their minds, hopeless, heartsick, homesick and depressed. Maybe an even more frightening feeling came – of love for the enemy - a sense the people being killed deserved to live, had been little boys who made their mothers proud, had families of their own who would grieve beyond bearing. Mai Lai and now the slaughter of innocents by Marines in Haditha, Iraq dramatically remind us that we ask our soldiers to not only sacrifice their lives but their souls.

The ones who served and survived often never actually leave the war – the brotherhood, the immediacy, the sense of mission and purpose bond veterans of the better wars into lifelong legions. The rest of us cannot understand, really, what both the living and dead endured. No matter what we think about the wars these men and women have fought, we must love and honor them and thank them with all our hearts. No matter how angry we might be with our country, how cynical we might have become about human goodness, these people are heroes because we will never know if their sacrifice actually allowed us to live in our homes, villages, cities, families and enjoy barbeques and storytelling until darkness falls and the fireflies wink their friendly “all clear” at the end of the day.

Others, too, have given their lives for a better world. Some, like Gandhi, King, Jesus, Romero, Robert Kennedy and on and on, also died in the middle of their fight for freedom. Some, like Allende, John Kennedy and Sadat, sacrificed their private lives for elected public service and were assassinated by the secret armies of the dominators, be they governments or Mafias or gangs or fanatics or, as we label them to reassure ourselves we are good, terrorists. The world is full of terrorists – full of cruel people who would kill, main and torture once the fire in their souls has gone to cold ash. The frontier of terrorism is everywhere – and in everyone who struggles to keep love alive in the middle of the horrors that come when fear turns to rage turns to impotence turns to hatred turns to predation on one another. Thank God for every single person, every nun in South America, every forest dweller, every social worker in slums, every nurse, doctor, mother and friend who has kept the light of love alive in terrible times. I remember them, not their innumerable names but their sacrifice and pray to never be so comfortable in my small, peaceful corner of the world that I forget. That I forget.

We wake each day on the frontier. Will we face the enemies squarely, pushing back those rivulets of cruelty, indifference and cowardice before they become a torrent and push us to greater brutality and shame? Will we remember the fallen by getting up ourselves in the emptiness of the morning and picking one enemy within to meet toe to toe, eye to eye?

I ask myself on this Memorial Day, “What would I die for?” Fortunately a pretty serious brush with death a few years ago helps me find an answer I can imagine is true. I too give my life for freedom – for the courage to love the dark and light of this world, to accept it just as it is, to put in my oar towards a better future with humility and irony intact, to be precisely honest with myself and others, to be grateful for the infinite number of small pleasures there to be tasted if only I can stay awake, to risk humiliation if the seed of creativity insists on growing up through the concrete of my caution, for saying “I’m sorry, please forgive me” as many times as need be (and they are many). I am not afraid to die physically. I now know for certain that I will – and it’s not the end of the world, so to speak. I am afraid of the living death of encroaching resignation and lies. So this Memorial Day, after breaking my heart thinking about the young who died in wars not of their making, I vow to remember to fight the wars before me with all my heart and soul.