REMEMBERING SORROW, REMEMBERING JOY
Cheryl Walker
May 28, 2006
When did we begin wishing each other a Happy Memorial Day? I've seen that a lot lately and it seems rather oxymoronic to wish someone a Happy Memorial Day. How does one have a happy day while remembering the dead? It says something about what this holiday has become that we would say Happy Memorial Day. We might as well say happy first day of your summer house day, or happy white shoes day, or happy shopping for tremendous sales on just about anything day.
Memorial Day it seems has become just a three day weekend at the beginning of summer. We may give lip service to the original meaning of the day, but do we really think of it as a day to memorialize those men and women who have given their lives in service to their country? Whether we agree with or disagree with the motivations for governments going to war, this day was supposed to be a day when we realize that there were mothers and fathers who received the worst news any parent can ever receive, their child has died.
Maybe it is the those very same motivations of governments that has turned us away from honoring our war dead. We have no taste for war, no taste for glorifying it, nor should we, because, in part, thanks to the media we understand the consequences of war better than we ever have. We see in living color the horrors of war and we know full well that war kills not only those brave young women and men called by their countries to fight them, but innocent people caught in the crossfire as well. This is not something new, but perhaps we because we can see them, we are more aware of the dangers of warfare. And our awareness of the truth about war makes us less willing to see war as glorious and see it for what it is horrendous—not to be entered into lightly and always with devastating consequences.
One of our society's reaction to this unmistakable truth has been to turn away from the meaning of Memorial Day and transform it from a day of remembering our sorrow, to a day of backyard barbeques and shopping at outlet malls. Safe behind our fences we shield ourselves from the effects of war and hide from the reality that war means death, always, it means death.
But it wasn't always that way. When the holiday was first recognized, celebrate seems like the wrong word, this country had just emerged from a Civil War that left no family unaffected. There are many stories about how the holiday first came into being but by 1868, when General John Logan, who was national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a group comprised of veterans of the war, proposed Decoration Day there was a growing understanding that there needed to be a day to remember those who had died in that the bloodiest of all this country's wars. New York was the first state to recognize the holiday and by the 1890s most of the Northern states recognized May 30th as Memorial Day, though it was originally called Decoration Day when the graves of the fallen would be decorated. Southern states have been slow to recognize the holiday and many of them still have a separate day to remember those who died under the Confederate flag. It wasn't until 1971 that it became a Federal Holiday to be observed on the last Monday of May. By then it had been transformed from a holiday that remembered the Civil War dead to a holiday that remembered all those who died during war.
The people who first observed Memorial Day knew there had to be a day to pause to remember the sorrow of war, the sorrow of death. But we have evolved into a society that no longer wishes to recognize, as a collective, the sorrow of war and even more so the sorrow of death. More than just a turning away from war, we turn away from recognizing death at all. We rage, rage against the dying of light, and shield ourselves from the harsh reality that we are always walking in the valley of the shadow of death. We believe somehow that if we run enough, eat right and don't engage in certain behaviors that somehow we will cheat death and live forever. We have a health care system that typically spends more money on a person in the last two months of their lives than the sum of all that is spent up until then. In what we know is a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable we will keep spending and spending, yet we will spend little or nothing on humane and compassionate end of life care. Everywhere we turn, there is a turning away from the realities of death.
We may run from death and sorrow but we cannot hide, it will find us soon or later. Who among us have not known the pain of losing someone we love. If you can count yourself among those who have not known that pain consider yourself fortunate indeed, but know that your good fortune will not last forever. We will all face the pain of grieve and sorrow when a person we love will leave this earth but not our hearts. Yet we live in a society that knows no way of recognizing this fact—we will all carry with us the pain of loss.
You can find a ton of books that will help you through the grieving process, and there is no shortage of therapists and yes even clergy who will be there in your days of intense pain at your loss. We have come to think that there is a period of time when we grieve and then somehow, in a month or a year, we are expected to get over it. I can't count the number of times that I have heard statements like—well its been a year he should have gotten past it by now. Or people will come to me thinking there is something wrong with them because though time has passed their wounds have not healed, their hearts have not been mended. Time is supposed to heal all wounds and maybe it does, but maybe it doesn't finish doing that until we too have made that final journey.
There is nothing wrong with you, if you find yourself still crying over the loss of a person whom you loved with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. There is something wrong with us as a society, if we do not have a way of acknowledging that we all grieve, that we all need a time to just pause and remember our sorrow. Perhaps Memorial Day should be just that day. A time that we may remember that we have all felt the cold sting of death's arrow. We might recognize that grief is like a thread that has woven itself into the fabric of our lives and not a process with a beginning and an end. We might transform again Memorial Day from a day of remembering only those who have died in war to a day when we all remember the names and faces of the people we have lost in not only the previous year but in the many years that we have known love and known loss.
Here we might sit in the silence of this sanctuary and take a moment to remember. Remember the sorrow we felt on the day that we knew the light of someone we cared for and cared about no longer shone on this earth.
Imagine what would happen if for one moment each year we all stopped the rush of our lives to just remember.
Imagine that moment is now.
In the silence we speak their names and tell them we still miss them.
In the silence we let it be known to ourselves that because we still love, we still mourn.
Imagine that in the silence of this place, in this hour, that we again are willing to open in our hearts that place where only they belong and let our grief once again surface if only for a little while.
Imagine that we know that the person sitting next to you, feels the same way: they too know the fragile nature of life and of love.
Imagine your soul reaching out to theirs as theirs are reaching out to yours and you are holding each other, knowing that whatever the circumstances of their loss you too know the common denominators of our existence, we love and we grieve.
Now imagine that we as a nation reach out in that same way. Each touching the other's soul saying without words, I know, I too feel the pain and anguish and sorrow of having loved and lost.
Imagine a world where time for a brief moment time is suspended while we all remember just how precious life is because we know that it is not forever. There are people everywhere in that moment for whom the pain of loss is immediate and fresh. And everywhere people for whom the pain is a memory but the loss remains. Yet in that moment we will all know one thing: we are not alone.
Imagine that moment when we know, we all know...we are not alone.
How might we see the person next to us if we had that moment? How might we see ourselves? How might we see life? Maybe if we knew that each of us knows or will know the intimacy of loss perhaps we would not be so willing to inflict that pain on each other. I might be a dreamer, and God knows that I am, but if we all felt in that moment the power of sorrow, how deep it goes, maybe, just maybe, we might not want to make Memorial Days for those who died in war. Maybe we would lay down our swords and shields and study war no more. Study war no more.
Yet even if that fair dream never came true, wouldn't we at least change how we lived each day? Remembering the sorrow that we felt in that moment, we might remember that once we knew happiness. Seeing the faces of those we lost we might also remember the joy that they gave us while they were still on this earth.
Imagine that we might remember the love that they gave so freely and we accepted so readily. Imagine what it would be like if we each spent a moment remembering the laughter that once rang so true in our lives.
Imagine in the silence of this place and this hour we remember the warmth we felt just to be in the presence of the ones we loved.
In the silence remember the names of those people who made us feel special with just the way the smiled at us.
Imagine that the person next to you feels the same joy you felt when you knew beyond any doubt that you were loved just for who you are.
Imagine your soul reaching out to touch the soul of the person next to you to let them know that yes you remember too. Yes you have known love and have known joy.
Now imagine a nation reaching out touching each others souls to share the joy they once felt and hope they might feel again.
Imagine a world doing the same: saying to one another we have felt joy, we may feel it again; we are dancing with each other in our hearts and the world experiences for a moment an incredible surge of energy and the earth itself smiles and the God of your heart says I am most pleased.
Imagine we would know that we are not alone in knowing joy.
What would we do if we knew that we were not alone in our joy? Would we want to share it every minute that we could even though we knew that our joy does not last forever? Perhaps knowing what it felt like to have touched the joy in another person's heart we would not be so willing to replace their joy with sorrow. And maybe knowing the joy that a father feels the first time he knows his child we might want that joy to last and we might lay down our swords and shield and study war no more. Study war no more.
Like I said, I am a unrepentant dreamer of big dreams. I can imagine in my mind's eye a world where we remember our sorrow and remember our joy and live everyday with those memories. Every morning we wake up and know that the coming day is an adventure waiting to be lived and that it may bring us joy and it may bring us sorrow, but whatever it brings we are not alone. I imagine a world where we reach out and try to bring more joy than sorrow to each person we encounter.
I can imagine when there will come a time when we have a worldwide Memorial Day. A day of remembrance of both the sorrows and the joys of living. A day when we call out the names of those who came before us and invoke the spirit of their love. A day when we may shed tears together for the lives that have been lost but not forgotten. And day where we might end in raucous laughter when we remember the joy of the love of those who forever remain in our hearts.
A memorial day when the each of us pauses if just for a moment to remember, knowing that one day someone will stop for a moment to call out our names. And we pray that when they do, they will shed a tear for the life that was ours and smile for the love that we gave them.
I imagine a time when Memorial Day is no longer a day when we lay wreaths at the tombs of soldiers because we can no longer remember a time when there was war. I imagine a time when all the people of the world knowing that we are one in spirit, part of one intricate web of existence, no longer feel the need or the desire to harm the souls of people they do not even know for they have felt their sorrow and felt their joy.
I imagine a time when we may all lay down in green pastures and walk the path of righteousness. A time when we anoint one another with oil and all of our cups overflow. I imagine a time when we prepare a table in the presence of our friends for we have made no enemies. When goodness and kindness will follow all of us all the days of our lives and we shall all live in the house of the Lord and that house shall be one we have built here on earth.
I imagine that world. Can you?
Amen and blessed be.