In the Space Between the Heavens

There are things we never forget. Some are generational: where you were when you heard President John F. Kennedy had been shot; when we first walked on the moon or what you were doing when the World Trade Center was attacked?

Other experiences, and to each his own, are more personal: where I was the first time I saw the woman I was to marry or what I was doing when our first-born told us he'd gotten hired for his first full-time job or our daughter told us she'd been accepted into college.

Life is millions of interconnected moments, each one linking and leading to the next from the previous, and each of our lives is what we do within those moments, both together and alone.

This is the Memorial Day weekend and the above was my feeble attempt to try to make sense of the sacrifice of those who died in uniform in the defense of their country, because it's my country, too. 

Until it got rolled into the great Monday Holiday Law to make More Three-Day Weekends (or whatever its official name is), we wouldn't celebrate Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as our parents called it, until this coming Friday. Good thing we got it moved, eh?

Those hot dogs and burgers aren't going to grill themselves. And those BOGO sales at the strip malls will not last forever and what about the Indy 500? Yeah, everyone's a winner when we make things into three-day holiday weekends. Sure, we lose sight eventually of what the holiday is about (some of us get Memorial Day and Veterans Day mixed up), but that's got as much to do with the rate and pace of change in our lives and society as well as our inability to maintain our focus long enough to complete a thought.

Reinterred Norwich soldiers (nine of fifteen who died) from Andersonville Prison Camp at the Yantic Cemetery, Norwich, Connecticut

Previous generations used to observe, not celebrate, Memorial Day, by visiting the graves of relatives and friends who'd died in uniform and placing flowers and little American flags. I saw someone the other day at the Yantic Cemetery in Norwich, on Lafayette Street behind Backus Hospital, driving his Audi on the walking path between the grave markers while talking on his cell phone. Classy, real classy. And the sports radio on? Nice touch.

Between now and eight o'clock tomorrow night (DST), when you tune into the PBS Memorial Day Concert, try to check the event's website the PBS folks have created. Every time I go there, I learn at least one new 'something' and I visit there a lot.

Here in Norwich, and near where you live as well, there will be observances-ours is Monday and starts with a parade at noon that starts near The Cathedral of Saint Patrick St. Patrick's and concludes at Chelsea Parade with a brief ceremony of remembrance.

There's speeching by a lot of folks who never served a day in uniform (sorry. My eight years in the Air Force makes me cranky sometimes at people who think because they are entitled to their opinion, I, too, should be entitled to it also) with small children scampering between the rows of metal folding chairs that the organizers so meticulously arranged. 

Then those chairs get rearranged as friends (every year, a few less than the time before) sit together and share their own memories as young men trapped in old men's bodies recall their wild youth and a school chum who didn't return from one of our far-off wars, and then there is a wreath laying at the (quite lovely) memorial on the north end. And before we know it, we're living and reliving Gunners Dream.
-bill kenny