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For some reason this particular Memorial Day has me in a real funk. It is a sad enough event every year remembering those who died in service but this year it is hitting me harder.
Is anyone else reacting that way? Or is it just me watching TV programming of people and families damaged or lost and for what gain (based upon current news reports)?
I spent a career in the Army and felt like it meant something. Now I wonder and am just sad about the outcomes of our endeavors.
Just curious if others are in the same boat. maybe this retiree life has me thinking too much
For some reason this particular Memorial Day has me in a real funk. It is a sad enough event every year remembering those who died in service but this year it is hitting me harder.
Is anyone else reacting that way? Or is it just me watching TV programming of people and families damaged or lost and for what gain (based upon current news reports)?
I spent a career in the Army and felt like it meant something. Now I wonder and am just sad about the outcomes of our endeavors.
Just curious if others are in the same boat. maybe this retiree life has me thinking too much
It happens as you get older. Why doesn't a victory stay won?
I'm turnin 65 this year..............I can relate,it seems that this year memorial day has slid into that ho-hum another holiday, so what, syndrome. I still personally set it aside to honor those relatives and friends that I have lost over the years.Also my thoughts turn to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.......KIA,a lot of them not yet grown..........barely having just a taste of life to have it taken from them.
My mortality is slowly making itself more apparent to me.........life goes much faster the older you are.
Before long i'll be making that journey myself.
I have a number of combat-experienced elders (my father, my father-in-law, and an uncle veterans of both the Korean war and Vietnam).
In their last years--just in the past five years, actually--before they died, they all finally pulled me aside to talk about the grimmer aspects of their experiences that they'd never talked about before. That's even given that I was more than a decade retired from the military myself. But it seems as though as they neared the end of their own lives, they needed to finally unburden themselves.
Interestingly, every talk with every one started the same way. "Let's go over to the VFW." That seemed to be the necessary setting, among others who understood even if they didn't speak of it.
I have a number of combat-experienced elders (my father, my father-in-law, and an uncle veterans of both the Korean war and Vietnam).
In their last years--just in the past five years, actually--before they died, they all finally pulled me aside to talk about the grimmer aspects of their experiences that they'd never talked about before. That's even given that I was more than a decade retired from the military myself. But it seems as though as they neared the end of their own lives, they needed to finally unburden themselves.
Interestingly, every talk with every one started the same way. "Let's go over to the VFW." That seemed to be the necessary setting, among others who understood even if they didn't speak of it.
My father died years ago in his 50s, and never really talked about his experiences until the last few months, as he was dying of cancer. Even then he never addressed his service in WW II. I would ask him and he only addressed, briefly, his Navy training and ship. Never any combat discussions, other than his rating (gunner's mate) and that he was injured on duty. However, he could not watch "Tora Tora Tora", it bothered him too much, so I knew something happened of great significance.
It wasn't until a couple years ago that I found his old muster rolls on Ancestry.com and saw that he was injured during a kamikaze attack on his minesweeper near Kuril days before the end of the war. I would have liked for him to have opened up more but in the end maybe it was his way of compartmentalizing his experiences, leaving them "over there".
My wife's uncle manned the Pusan perimeter in Korea, and likewise won't talk about it.
My friends who were killed during OIF/OEF would not want me to be morose and dwell on it. I can guarantee you that. You almost make the holiday about yourself. You remember them through a thoughtful prayer, a story retelling, or funny incidents that happened. I tell my kids the same stories every year about my fellow Marines who died in those ****holes over there. We laugh, think about those fallen Marines and their families and then move on.
Shoe on the other foot, would you want your buddies hemming and hawing about **** they can't change? No, neither would I. Grab a cold one, eat a burger, high five a kid, look at a pretty woman (or man whatever), smell the air. All of it, experience all of it for them.
But, don't let it get you down...that's the real dis-service over these holidays.
I've had to bite my tongue to not respond negatively to people saying "happy memorial day". Do you go to a funeral and say happy burial?
That rather depends on one's custom, doesn't it? Our wakes are terrific celebrations, a feast with a case of champagne. (in fact, such is a learned statement of defiance in, "Surrender this or that or we kill your kin." "Go ahead! We have already picked the wine for the wake!").
It is a gathering of friends, a celebration of their life, and a rather joyous event.
I am not knocking the ways of another but that is ours when it comes to death.
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