Every year around this time, I find myself pausing. Not just because the calendar says it’s a three-day weekend, or because the grill needs to be cleaned because of mold, a Pacific Northwest thing, and the lawn chairs and my favorite Adirondack chair needs to be rinsed.
I pause because there are two flags in my yard. One is the United States flag and one is the U.S. Army flag.
Neither are especially large. The U.S. flag doesn’t wave as dramatically as the one that flies at the post office or over a parade route.
But it’s mine. And, more than that, it’s ours.
Memorial Day is often mistaken for Veterans Day. The difference, though sobering, matters: Memorial Day is not for thanking the living but for remembering the dead — those who gave the last full measure of devotion, as President Abraham Lincoln said, so the rest of us could go on living the way we do.
I remember the first time I really understood that.
I was maybe 10 years old. My grandpa took me to the cemetery, one of those older ones where the stones stand like sentinels and the grass is always just a little too long. He pointed out numerous stones with names written on them — names I didn’t recognize. Grandpa told me this man had gone to war and never come back. There wasn’t a flag there, just a weather-worn marker and the stillness of time.
“Not everyone gets a parade,” grandpa said.
As a kid, I didn’t quite understand what he meant. But over the years, it came into focus: Memorial Day is not about the spectacle. It’s about the silence.
The silence in a mother’s home after the knock at the door.
The silence in a platoon that comes back one person short.
