Several times each year I intentionally remind myself of my freedoms and that those freedoms have come at a cost. One of those occasions is Memorial Day.
I found the following poem, written by Wallace Stevens, an American modernist poet who published his first book of poetry (Harmonium) in 1923, just over 100 years ago. In it was a poem called “The Death of a Soldier.”
‘The Death of a Soldier’
Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days’ personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops.
When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.
The line that caught me is, “Death is absolute and without memorial.”
Is it true that death is “without memorial”? Perhaps as an event death does its work and offers nothing more. Death itself only takes and provides no memorial.
But as a matter of shared inevitability among us, we recognize that, by nature, there is nothing more here for a person after death, and we make an effort to keep a memory of the deceased alive through our mourning, our cemetaries, and our memorial days.
It is more poignant still when death is voluntarily embraced for a noble cause. Death comes for us all eventually, but some are willing to embrace it unnaturally early for the sake of protecting others they both know and would never know for generations to come.
That’s what this Memorial Day is for. You may not personally know any of the thousands of men and women who have given “the last full measure of devotion.” The many thousands of them probably never knew you. But you can breathe a prayer of thanks for them and their willingness to confront whatever threatened their contemporaries and the lives yet to come, including yours.
Be grateful today for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to you and to me.