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The Art of Remembering


In this country we find ourselves at Memorial Weekend.  Clearly, the description of the weekend is unambiguous: memorial means remembering.  It is the “Remembering Weekend.”  There will be parades to highlight the festivities.  The little parade in my suburban town is so quaint and tiny, it is hilarious.  Of course, there are the boy scouts and girl scouts.  There are all the Little League baseball and softball players.  The fire trucks gain attention because the siren going off in your ears at a distance of 15 feet is dramatic!  And finally, there are always the politicians!

The other thing that is a staple for Memorial Weekend is the visit to the cemetery.  Now that I am living in a much larger, urban context, I am less aware of folks going to the cemetery.  When I was a kid, I did not really understand this ritual.  No one significant in my life had died.  There was no one “living in the cemetery,” as I once put it, that I felt like I wanted to visit.

But when my grandparents began to die---one by one---I had a dawning sense of why my parents and others always wanted to go to the cemetery.  Of course, it was true that an annual visit was not the sole guarantee of “remembering” them.  I was aware my parents stopped by the cemetery on other occasions, too.  But somehow, Memorial Weekend was special, much like Christmas was special, but one still went to church other Sundays, too.

I like history, so it was fun to begin to learn something of the origins and history of the holiday.  It seems our own Civil War (1861-1865) formed the soil for the Memorial Day seeds.  That is not surprising.  That gruesome war left death, mourning, and the need to remember scattered all over our land.

The official Memorial Day proclamation occurred on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.  It commenced with the laying of wreaths on graves of soldiers of both Confederate and Union soldiers in Arlington Cemetery.  Well before the end of the 19th century all the northern states recognized this holiday.  What I was surprised to learn was the southern states refused to recognize this end-of-May memorial until after WW I when the focus of the holiday shifted from Civil War dead to the deceased from all wars.  Such formed the holiday which we celebrate this weekend.

As an American, I am happy to remember with appreciation all those women and men who have died for this country.  And I also remember the large number of them who suffered in so many ways.  The war that formed my own generation---the Vietnam War---still scars countless folks. 

I won’t go to the cemetery this weekend.  Most of my deceased family and close friends “live” in a couple different cemeteries back in Indiana.  To make that drive merely to stand physically at the graveside is not necessary.  What I will choose to do is take a little time by myself and “remember.”  The human capacity to remember dazzles me!  As St. Augustine said centuries ago, remembering is the human way to hold the past in the present.  So I will celebrate my Memorial Weekend.

I am also glad that the Weekend has expanded to include more than the war dead.  The key is “more.”  If we include all who have preceded us in death, we do not do less honor to the war dead.  They will always have a special place in this weekend’s art of remembering.

The inclusiveness of all deceased folks makes perfect sense spiritually speaking.  Finally, we are all in it together---all humanity is implicated by death.  Some have already died; the rest of us are in process.  What so many of us hope is somehow our lives---our ordinary, quiet, little lives---finally have meaning and the meaning will be remembered and celebrated.  But that remembering and celebrating has to be done by someone else when we are dead!

And that’s one of the points of spirituality.  When my own process of dying is complete (and I am dead), I take solace in the fact that God is the Other Who is very practiced in the art of remembering.  And it won’t happen just annually; it will happen eternally….whatever kind of Memorial Weekend that will be!

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