“May perpetual light shine upon
The faces of all who rest here.
May the lives they lived
Unfold further in spirit.
May all their past travails
Find ease in the kindness of clay.
May the remembering earth
Mind every memory they brought.
May the rains from the heavens
Fall gently upon them.
May the windflowers and grasses
Whisper their wishes into light.
May we reverence the village of presence
In the stillness of this silent field.”
~John O’Donohue

Today is Memorial Day. I have been reflecting on the differences in the way this particular day has been as compared with the observance of this day when I was a child and teenager. Growing up in a place which is a bit warmer than Minnesota, my Ohio summers began with holiday. School was finished for the year before Memorial Day. The swimming pool opened on this national holiday. There was that sense of freedom and deep breaths that come with the realization that the rhythm of your life is about to change. Memorial Day was the beginning of the adventure of what the summer months might hold.

The day was usually warm, quite warm and began with a parade. Not a large parade but one that included the marching band and those veterans who had served and were able to march. It was a small town, a short parade, but its unfolding also signaled the unfolding of so much. As a child these veterans in their varying styles of uniforms seemed mysterious to me. My own father had served in the Navy but he did not march with this group. I wondered about them, what they had seen and experienced and if they ever spoke of it to their children. My father certainly had not.

As a teenager, I had become a part of that marching band and things in the country and in my own understanding of all kinds of institutions had become confused, complicated. It was the midst of the Vietnam War and there was so much to wonder about, so much to question, so much that seemed full of an ambiguity I had not known as a child. I continued to observe these men who had served in wars that had happened before I was born knowing that somehow their experience seemed different than that of the young men I had seen return from the war that spanned my adolescence. These young men seemed removed, lost, filled with a woundedness I had not seen before. They also were not a part of the parade.

Of course, the route of the parade ended in the cemetery where prayers were prayed, flags were raised and the mournful sound of ‘Taps’ wafted across the humid, summer air. We were there to help hold a memory of the ones who had not returned and all those, whether military or not, who had slipped from our sight.

Today My Memorial Day held none of this. I no longer watch as the band marches by or the veterans carry flags in procession. I am the poorer for it. But I can still hold, and do, the memory for those I have known who have served and pray God’s ‘perpetual light’ upon them. Some have passed from this earth yet others, still living, carry their own memories of what this way of honoring their country means to them. At least one in our family is now serving in his own way and will be storing up his own experiences. My prayers surround him as well.

For what or for whom do you hold memory today?