Remembering and honoring

The weather has turned (mostly) nice lately, and many of us have been eagerly awaiting Memorial Day Weekend to officially kick off the outdoor summer season. It may be the weekend you start on your garden or plant the flower boxes; it may be a good time for a long motorcycle or horseback ride, or a lazy session on the porch in a rocker with a good book. It might be the weekend of your first seasonal camping trip.

That’s all well and good, but along with all the celebration of longer days and summer sun and fun things to do, the Memorial Day Weekend (or the actual calendar day, Monday) should also be what it was intended to be – a time to remember and honor those who have died in the service of our country.

In researching the weekend online again, I’ve found that no one really knows exactly when or where Memorial Day (first officially known as Decoration Day) really started. Over two dozen cities claim to have been the first with remembrance rituals, but there isn’t one that is universally agreed upon.

It is noted that women’s groups in the South started decorating Confederate graves before the Civil War ended, but a formal Decoration Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868, by General John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. That first official national observance of the Day was on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on both Union and Confederate soldiers’ graves in Arlington National Cemetery.

It wasn’t until after World War One that the holiday was changed from just honoring those who fought and died in the Civil War to honoring all Americans who died in all wars. In 1915, Moina Michael wrote a poem in response to the well-known “In Flanders Field.” It goes like this: “We cherish too, the Poppy red/That grows on fields where valor led/It seems to signal to the skies/That blood of heroes never dies.” It was her idea to wear red poppies on Memorial Day to honor the war dead, and to sell them to benefit servicemen in need.

In 1968, Congress changed the official “day” of Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, thereby ensuring a three-day weekend for us all (Memorial Day Weekend).

For many of us, while we’re having our holiday and Memorial Day fun on Monday, it’s hard to imagine living through a war like the Civil War or either of the world wars, or even being in the midst of all the conflicts going on right now around the world. Life is basically good for us here and now, in spite of our many day-to-day challenges.

It’s easy to take our freedoms for granted, and hard and unpleasant to remember that our freedoms were won and kept by the blood of fellow Americans. It’s hard for us to imagine, even in our current troubled times, that those names on the walls or the tombstones are names of people who had lives very much like our own. It is also hard for most of us to imagine being willing to die so that others can keep having picnics and parades.

I hope you enjoy your long weekend, as the pursuit of happiness is something those fellow Americans died defending. I’m also hoping you stop for a few minutes this weekend and take the time to remember and honor the men and women who have given their lives so that you can have the freedoms you now have, to think about what it means to each individual and to the country, and maybe to think about what you would be willing to do — or what you might be willing to do without — to keep the freedoms you have. In these uncertain times, it may come to that yet.

And while you’re at it, perhaps take a few more moments to remember what the American spirit of freedom means – along with our ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, plus truth and justice for all -- so that the sacrifices of our family, friends and neighbors will not have been in vain.

And maybe the best way to honor those who have fallen is to make a commitment to the ideals of freedom and independence for all, and to work for peace and a more just world for all so that fewer sacrifices by anyone will be necessary in the future.

© 2024 Mel Makaw. Mel, local writer/photographer and author of On the Bright Side, a Collection of Columns (available locally at Tehachapi Arts Center and Healthy Hippie Trading Co.), welcomes your comments at [email protected]/.