You Hear the Tolling Bell

Today is Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday (ironically and accidentally actually on a Monday this year) so we can have a three day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach, and some laps at the Brickyard (okay turns out that was yesterday, but it's the thought that counts). 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up and with whom we went to school but who never, themselves, got to be old, or whose parents and grandparents, having survived the Depression battled fascism to its knees in a worldwide war and their children and their children who have been engaged in a dozen "smallish" wars for the last half a century that all seem to cost lives.

Every town across the country has observances as do we here in Norwich, Connecticut. The first, as is tradition, is at Taftville's Memorial Park, starting at 10, and though I'm not a resident of Taftville I'm always welcomed as will you be. It's a wonderful way to start Memorial Day and I missed it last year because of the pandemic and am happy to have it return. 

Also returning is a parade organized by the City of Norwich and the Norwich Area Veterans Council that steps off 'sharply' at noon from The Cathedral of Saint Patrick on Broadway and ends with a memorial ceremony at Chelsea Parade. 

On a day usually filled with backyard barbecues and family softball games, the remembrances help us realize war is not an abstract geopolitical game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal, and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

And while today we should mark the ultimate sacrifice of those who have served, we can also spare a thought or prayer for those who have survived as well. They bear scars, often invisible and painful, of their struggles that take a lifetime to heal.

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children, and our nation.
-bill kenny