So…..we’ve come upon another Memorial Day Weekend. Fourth Monday? Memorial Day? Another contrived three day weekend marked by traffic jams and the influx of what we term “the godless hordes” at the beach, kids with fresh spun cotton candy and popcorn and teens all greased and glowy and reeking of coconut. In backyards and ‘burbs across the country there’s noise from just opened swimming pools releasing enough chlorine that an alarm should be sounded and come late afternoon males will be sweating over smoking briquettes incinerating rather than searing some piece of animal.
Forget me not.
There’s a click of heels in the distance and the Flags In ceremony is complete. I know in the barracks I’d be knocked out be the fumes of Brasso and Kiwi polish, and a trip to the stables would smell of fresh hay, wood soap, and large animals who know I don’t quite like them. Out here though the grass is still damp and you can smell the wood from the flags marking the graves. Not all the graves, you understand….the civilian spouses and children don’t get such recognition this time.
Forget me not.
There’s a small copse near the bottom of the staircase. I visit it when I’m there in the mid-summer heat. One officer’s grave, a couple wives of officers and several children. None of them are related to each other. From the dates and location, it’s doubtful anyone from the families visits. It’s up to one of the guards to ‘adopt’ them for the duration of his tour. They do that at the ‘garden’ – take note of a grave. It might be someone famous with a rarely mentioned military background, a former ‘battle buddy’, a chaplain, or an unnamed slave in Section 27 whose stone is simply carved ‘Citizen’.
Forget me not.
There’s a woman down in one of the new sections. By her dress and bearing she looks like an Arlington Lady. She must be the one I’ve heard of. The mother of a female warrior sends her money and asks her to get flowers and take them to the daughter in Section 60. They’re pink and purple roses and lilacs for a girly-girl who was once disguised as a warrior. The original note from the Arlington Lady had said “If you ever need anything…”
Forget me not.
Section 60 on this Memorial Day weekend seems much more what we’d associate with the original Decoration Day (fore-runner to Memorial Day). Parents, children, widows, and widowers come, sit on the grass and visit. The children are so very young. Will they come once they’re grown? Right now they play on the grass, sip from their juicy box and color drawings for daddy or mommy. There’s a sweet gum tree near the road to commemorate Operation Restore Hope. When you rub the leaf it smells like lemon and mint. Maybe there’s message here to accept the bitterness, but find the energy and strength to go on. I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m here I think too much.
Forget me not.
Their souls are part of a nation’s memory and future obligations whether they have names and lie in family plots, national cemeteries here or abroad, or are the 83,000 still unaccounted for in unmarked European farm fields or Asian jungles. Someone’s son, someone’s sister. There’s not a ‘happy’ thing about it.
Painting Kelly Ann Cutter (kellyannedesigns.com)
Take a moment during the three day Memorial Day weekend and say a quiet thank you to the memory of someone in your family or the honored dead generally and count your blessings.
Doesn’t it seem odd that the forget me not has no scent? I did discover a species that gives off a scent only in the evening – a time when humans tend to ruminate. Science and experience tell us that scent and memory are inextricably linked. Might this be another example of some grand cosmic design?
–Mary Beth Devine, Contributor
“The patriots we memorialize today sacrificed not only all they had but all they’d ever know. They gave of themselves until they had nothing more to give. It’s natural when we lose someone we care about to ask why it had to be them. ‘Why my son? Why my sister? Why my friend? Why not me?’ These are questions that can’t be answered by us. But on this day, we remember that it’s on our behalf that they gave their lives. We remember it’s their courage, their unselfishness, their devotion to duty that’s sustained this country through all its trials, and will sustain it through all the trials to come. We remember that the blessings we enjoy as Americans came at a dear cost. Our presence in a free society bears testimony to their enduring legacy. Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay. But we can honour their sacrifice, and we must. We must honour it in our own lives by holding their memories close to our hearts, and heeding the example they set”.-President Barak Obama