The Writing Life Too

The sky is a mysterious mosaic of clouds although it will be clearing up later with highs in the 70s. Today I wrote a poem for Memorial Day and later I’m going to visit an old cemetery that is nearby to honor the veterans buried there.

I haven’t attended a Memorial Day parade since I was a kid. I grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin, and we attended all the parades throughout the year, sitting curbside amid a cheering crowd. Like the annual county fair and the fourth of July fireworks, these celebrations were bright sparks in the calendar. I can remember that in many parades candy was thrown to the kids and we’d scramble after it like monkeys. 

And I remember parades as raucous celebrations, except for the Memorial Day parade when the crowd responded to the proceedings with occasional bursts of solemn applause, then dispersed to the cemetery to lay flowers and flags on headstones. In all our small town parades, there were usually fire trucks, tractors and shiny equipment from the John Deere dealership, floats made by local merchants, the high school band, and a ragtag group of Veterans straggling down the street, some so old or frail they were pushed in wheelchairs.

I’ve been watching the News Hour on PBS for years now, but since the Iraq occupation, whenever I’m home at night I try to turn it on. You see, at the end of each show a segment is broadcast in remembrance of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a graphic of a yellow-hued sunset, then each soldier’s photo is shown in silence. When this segment comes on, I stop all my thoughts and focus sharply on the photos. Sometimes the newly dead are so young that all you can notice is their youth and wasted promised, especially when they’re shown wearing a prom tuxedo or their first official military photo in an ill-fitting cap. Sometimes the men (and occasionally women) are in their thirties or forties or even fifties, so you’re certain that their deaths have devastated families, left behind children without a parent. As the photos appear on screen, one after another, I will myself into a stillness and let my feelings of loss and sadness wash over me.