Icon Riot

Honor and Ambivalence

Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer.

Memorial Day is a day off, if you're lucky,

Memorial Day is a day for grilling steaks and drinking beer with your family and friends.

Memorial Day is a day you visit the cemetery where your loved ones are buried, to clean their graves and put flowers down upon the ground in which they lie.

Memorial Day is a day to remember your aunt, who was a nurse in Vietnam, and who was never the same after she returned stateside; your great-uncle who died in the Korean War. And his dad, who died on Omaha Beach on D Day, in the only war in the past 85 years that was a necessary war.

It's a time to remember that your great-great grandfather fell at Bellau Wood in the First World War. And, if you know of an ancestor who died in the Civil War, perhaps someone who died serving the Union at Gettysburg, it's a time to remember them. 

It's a time to remember your big brother, whose ticket was punched in the Persian Gulf War; your best friend, who's still dealing with PTSD after serving in Afghanistan. 

Memorial Day is a time to remember all the people you don't know, who served and who died in every war that wasn't called a war, in every war that was a coldly calculated geopolitical move, in every war built to boost a failing administration, every damn war that should never have been fought. 

Memorial Day is a time to remember those who served and who still breathe, but who wake up with nightmares, those who struggle with a lost leg, a lost arm, a lost eye, a lost job, a lost home, and all because they served.

Memorial Day is a time to honor all of these people, both the heroes and the ones who war brought the worst out in. They all deserve to be remembered and, to whatever extent possible, honored. 

Memorial Day is a day to remember them, and to loathe war.

The sun is shining. I'm going to go to Rosehill Cemetery here in Chicago, where there are Civil War veterans buried.