Posts tagged ‘memorial day’

Memorial Day is a special day for me. I have written about how every year my son Max and I go to the cemetery to honor my Dad who has been gone for over 20 years.

Max knows why we go but this year I think he has started to get a real understanding about what it is all about.

As usual we raked and cleaned the burial plot but today Max grabbed some towels which he wet down from a faucet he found nearby. He then knelt on the ground and scrubbed each of the two stones. He knew he wasn’t doing this just for Grandpa but for Grandma too. She had already been there before us to place her rose on the grave.

There was another difference this year. Every year the veterans organizations place small flags at each of the deceased vets’ graves. It has always been sporadic leading you to believe that not too many people in this cemetery served. But today there were hundreds of flags dotting the landscape. It was overwhelming. Especially since my Dad had two, one for each stone.

Max was fascinated and went from site to site reading the engravings. This man was a marine. This woman had been in the air force. And these others served in the army just like his grandfather. He wanted to know why my Dad had two flags; he had never been an officer. Was he special? The only answer I could give him was “Yes!”

As we left the cemetery I mentioned that one day I would have one to. Would he take care of it? Max became very solemn, ”Dad, I will come here a lot and spend the whole day just cleaning and being with you!”

“But what if you have moved far away like maybe to California?”

“I will still be here a lot! But you know, you are going to live to be 150 years old so that’s a long way away.”

I didn’t push it but it was very nice to hear.

The memorial weekend didn’t stop here though. On the day itself Max was scheduled to march in our town parade with the cub scouts. The first thing he did when he got up was to dress in his army uniform. He had everything on from hat to boots. This, of course, is the day to honor our fallen heroes.

When it got close to parade time he changed to his cub scout uniform. We then headed out to the starting place. He joined his pack and received quick marching training from the scout leader. He got a flag and a neck strap to hold it. And he was very solemn as if the memorial was weighing him down.

When it was time the scouts, along with the veterans, police, firemen, and High School band, marched 25 minutes to the cemetery. The boys were part of the honor guard so their flags were raised in honor of the Gold Star Mothers, the Pledge of Allegiance, and Taps. They also listened to the roll call of the soldiers that have recently died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And if they were like me they jumped during the 21 gun salute.

Max seemed to get what was going on but I wonder if he really did. I was reminded of the young soldiers we see on Saturdays. On those days he, my father-in-law and I go to breakfast at a diner at the local airport. These boys come in all dressed shiny and clean to wait for the transport plane that takes them off to basic training. They are nervous but excited about what is about to happen to them.

There are so many of these squeaky clean kids that go off to war to protect our country and come back within a year either in body bags or grizzled old men that have experienced too much in their young lives. Quite often they suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome and require a lot of therapy and medicine to survive.

Have you ever seen the old television series Mash? It was about a group of doctors during the Korean War whose jobs were to patch up the young boys that were injured in battle so that they could go back to continue the fight. And it is also about the affect it had on them.

In one episode a young pilot was shot down and brought into the hospital with minor injuries. He was sympathetic towards the wounded soldiers but he also bragged about his “9 to 5″ war. He was stationed in Japan with his wife and kids. In the morning he would get up; fly over to Korea; drop a few bombs; and then head back to his family and a good home cooked meal.

While he was recuperating he ran into some severely injured 5 and 6 year olds. He wanted to know who could attack young children so brutally. One doctor looked at him and answered “you did that when you dropped your bombs.” Until then this man was totally unaffected by the war. All he ever did was fly around in the sky. When he finished his job he never saw the aftermath. And he cried bitterly; these children were the same age as his own. It forever changed him.

Max can’t wait to join the service. He wants the opportunity to serve our country. But like the young men we see fly out of our airport he doesn’t get what war really is or why we have a memorial day to honor our dead. Maybe it takes a first, or even a second, hand experience to grasp the full meaning.

But maybe it is enough right now for him; he is only 9. Soon enough he may experience it and then he will understand why he should honor our dead.

I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day holiday.  Did you have a chance to honor anyone?  As most of us know this is the day we commemorate the men and women from the United States who died while in the military.  It first became a holiday to honor both the Confederate and Union soldiers that died in the Civil War but after World War I it included American casualties in any war.

It is also the day that I celebrate the veterans.  I applaud them as they pass by during the parades.  I go to the cemeteries and watch the ceremonies.  This year my town honored a young soldier that had fought in Iraq and won many medals, but was actually killed while on leave back here in the States.

I also honor my Dad.  He was a veteran of World War II and died in the 1980s.  For many years now I have gone to clean his gravesite on the Saturday before the holiday.  He has two stones, one at his head, and one that was installed by the military at his feet.  I rake the area, clip the grass around the stones, and weed and edge the dirt and grass around them.  After that I wash the stones to make them shine for when my Mother arrives on Monday morning to place a single red rose on the plot.

This year my boy Max joined me.  He was fascinated by what I was doing and immediately joined in.  He is 8 years old and my Father never had the pleasure of meeting him.  This didn’t stop my boy from honoring his Grandfather.  Towards the end of our work I realized I had forgotten something to clean the stones with.  Without a second thought Max took off his tee shirt and rubbed them both down.  It amazes me sometimes the initiative he shows at such a young age.

As we worked I told Max stories about his Granddad.

Dad, his brother, and their father all were in World War II.  My grandfather served in the south pacific while his sons were in Europe.  Dad was a prisoner of war camp guard before joining the army air corps (the precursor to the air force).  He loved to fly and parachute.  When I was my son’s age he would take me out to Orange Massachusetts where there was an airfield.  We would sit on the side of the road and watch the jumpers falling out of the sky.

After the war he got married, worked, and played hard.  He was an extreme skier, parachutist, hunter, and boater.  He gave all of this up when a friend ended up in a body cast for a year from a skiing accident.  In those days there wasn’t any insurance and he wouldn’t be able to afford supporting a wife and a half a dozen kids if he got hurt.

He was a school teacher who also worked several part time jobs to keep food on the table.  And he loved kids.  If he could have, he would have had a dozen.  As it was he had 5 of us; and along with our mother, a couple of cousins, a grandmother, and a grandaunt he had his work cut out for him.

In 1980 he developed throat cancer.  He had been a heavy smoker for years so his doctors weren’t surprised.  To combat his illness they buried gold nuggets into his throat so that they could give him radiation and that seemed to work.

For 5 years he appeared to have recovered but at the same time he was unable to stop smoking.  And then in the end it was discovered that the cancer had spread throughout his body.  It was time for chemotherapy.  This time he lost his hair and wore a wig from then on.  He began to waste away and still he could not stop smoking.  He used to joke about losing his teeth.  He could actually take them out of his mouth with the root intact and then place them back in.  When questioned about the cigarettes he would shrug and say that he had lived a good long life.

In the spring of 1985 I found and put an offer on a house.  Dad cosigned the purchase and sales agreement with me.  I had to keep leaving the real estate office at the time because I kept coughing uncontrollably.  I later found I had walking pneumonia.  I recovered but Dad kept getting sicker and sicker.  At the final signing I went to the office alone and signed the papers.  My Dad was not able to travel then so the agent brought them to his house so he could sign them too.  She actually guided his hand as he wrote his name.

After she left he couldn’t even function.  My brother and I put him in a chair and carried him out to the car while my mother towed his oxygen tank behind us.  After we placed both him and the tank into the car we drove to the hospital down in Boston.  After putting him to bed my Mother placed on the table the usual bowl of M&Ms that my Dad always kept for the nurses during his stays here.  Not long afterward he was loaded up with morphine and entered a drug coma.  This was Saturday, on Tuesday the doctors recommended we take him off of life support.

The doctors were amazed that he fought to stay alive even in his coma.  On Wednesday morning I went to work.  I just couldn’t imagine there would ever be a time when my Dad wouldn’t be around.  But part way through the morning I left the office and went to see him.  I took the elevator up to his floor and waited for the door to open.  At the very moment the door opened my family was standing on the other side waiting to go home.  I missed his death.

The death certificate said “cause of death: pneumonia.”

It took two years for me to finally mourn his death.  In 1987 I was in Jamaica with my brother.  Late one night I was lying on the beach and it finally hit me that he was gone and I wept until the early morning.  I didn’t go to his grave for 9 years after he died.  I don’t know if I blamed him or me for his death but I had dreams constantly of the doctors finding a cure and using it to revive him.

In 1994 I finally visited him at his grave and I have been going several times a year ever since.  And on Saturday Max and I performed our yearly ritual of cleaning his grave as we honored my Dad for all that he did for his country and for his family.