A Year of Morning Thanks

Memorial Day, 2008

One of the most famous short stories of all time is a little parable by titled "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, a chilling tale about a community which ritually slaughters one of its own every year even though no one remembers why anymore.

The story does a little reducto ad absurtum job on small town life and culture--or at least this small-towner has often thought. No matter--it's an unforgettable story and often, I will admit, on the money with its criticism. Ms. Jackson wasn't wrong: sometimes small-towners do things in the very same way, week after week, year after year, because, well, it's the way they've always been done. Things get set in stone quite easily in the very human quest for ritual and the meaning such things afford. You don't even have to live in a small town either, methinks.

Okay, this from an old anti-war protester. The annual Memorial Day celebration in town where I live had long ago become wooden. The same man reads the names of the dead while surrounded by a profusion of flags. The same men's quartet sings the same patriotic songs. Some pastor gets up and offers a homily/Jeremiad about how the country will shipwreck if we throw in the towel on this, that, or the other moral value. Memorial Day doings have been the same since I started attending them here, almost thirty years ago. The speakers have always been different, but even their messages were the same.

Maybe that’s okay. Any small town's Memorial Day celebration is a solemn recitation. It's not the occasion for a carnival.

But then, just two years ago, things changed dramatically. Beneath the same half-circle of flags, the same men's quartet sang, the same retired radio announcer read the list of vets who didn't return . Some pastor roared for patriotism.

What changed was that a name was added to the list of fallen. Not long before that year's celebration, a local kid was killed in Iraq by an IED—a roadside bomb. The addition of a name made the otherwise staid and worn ritual into something both immensely fresh and painful.

This morning there will be another change. That hero's sisters will sing; the men's quartet is out. There will be more change--and more aching pain.

But all of that is fitting, or so it seems to me. That we ache about war is only right.

This morning, Memorial Day, I am thankful for those whose lives allow me to sit here and type these words, thankful for their sacrifice, for their gift.

And I’m sad, so very sad. This most recent hero is buried out there in the town cemetery, same graveyard. He left a wife and family.