Memorex

I’m not the vet whisperer. I’m not here to tell you how to live, and I’m definitely not here to tell you how to weekend.

Occasionally, well-meaning Americans ask me what’s an appropriate way to observe Memorial Day. We don’t have a lot of somber holidays on our calendar. In a culturally “Easter and Christmas” society, there’s not a lot of thought spared for Good Friday.

What’s so good about it, anyway? It commemorates the day a Jew was butchered in public or, as we say on Earth, “Friday.” A fine weekend opener.

Memorial Day commemorates our battle-fallen soldiers. People have leveraged this reverence in various ways. Every year, the internet graces us with reminders that Confederate soldiers were patriots, too. They like to forget that the seeds of Decoration Day, later Memorial Day, were planted by freed slaves and missionaries on May 1, 1865.

Those Americans good and true mustered to honor Union soldiers who died at a planter’s horse track that had been converted to a military prison. At least 257 United States soldiers died there of malnutrition, disease, and untreated injuries, and were pushed into unmarked graves. The local black citizenry undertook to ensure their bodies received proper burial and honors, erecting a sign over the entrance to the cemetery they built. Whether intentionally or unintentionally layered in its meaning, the sign read “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

To this day, Americans have grown the tradition, although it’s curiously young (the precise age of my spouse) as a federally recognized holiday. Memorial Day has expanded, in many families, to decorating the graves of loved ones, whether or not military service contributed either to their demise or their life stories.

In general, it’s a holiday that carries overtones of gratitude to those who sacrificed for the nation; for us. To me, it’s a reminder that bigger minds and bigger hearts must ultimately prevail: that in order to have a nation worth preserving, we must continuously build, strive, rebuild, and maintain her. Frankly, it’s a bit like running a vintage car with a constantly evolving blend of newer components: re-engineering is a constant requirement.

Which is part of how I’m spending Memorial Day weekend this year: meditatively tinkering on a mildly incontinent British roadster with more torque than brains (kinda like me, kinda like my country; ’tis of thee!).

Will I talk to some military buddies? Probably. I’ll drive out today, to walk the grounds at Tahoma National Cemetery, but I’ll also prune down our backyard because I’m goddamned grateful to have one and to find myself here, in a peaceful part of the Pacific Northwest corner of these United States, where I have that grass-booted opportunity because I’m still breathing, still enjoying this life that, if I’m honest, many others paid a dear price for.

I won’t turn it down. I don’t think you should, either. If you want to barbecue, throw a street dance, or blast your motorcycle down a winding road, alone; if you want to take your boat out and fish with friends or crack a frosty six-pack of beer or root beer or White Claw (seriously?), do your thing. No soldier, living or dead, would begrudge you the joy they believed, in their hearts, was worth their lives.

I’ll be enjoying my life right through to the end of this holiday weekend, including the somber remembrances.

And then, because I’m an American, I’ll go buy a refrigerator.