Memorial Day 2013

 

 Memorial Day 2013

Last night a concert in DC- full of deep sonorous lengthy tributes

Played twice in succession on my digital device

While I sat wondering how best to memorialize

An uncle I never knew and thank my mom for her service-

Thank a lot of folks for courage and acts as unknown

As those in the Tomb Obama visited today, to lay a wreath to the nation's sacrificing inhabitants,
Came commemoration.

When I was young, but not too young to have serious thoughts and fears,

We went to visit the gravesite of my uncle, Marshall Lucas

To this day I don't know how this happened

But it was Memorial Day and my parents had to have

Colluded to arrange the trip near his Mom in St. Petersburg,

To me we were just there, and nothing in our life

Was like that.

Small markers spread out over the field forever

In perfect order, calm, quiet, at peace.

But I thought we'd never find him, frankly.

Mom had coordinates and some kind of map

Asked a gravekeeper for information

We each spread out, taking up the task with determination

Oddly detracting from the grieving part-my Mother laughed at that

We did find him, as I tried to imagine how he could be in 

That tiny spot while looking down on us.

The thing that spoke to me

With the silence of hide and seek, was that he was so damn young to be there

We had some flowers, something my father gathered

That stayed beautiful amid the red, White and blue flags

Oddly interrupting the perfect visual lines

And the order there, the rows, (we clanked around placing glads)

Respect clearly paid to the families-a semblance of ritual-the calm solace

Mom didn't try to explain it to us kids much that morning

To tell  of his loss in Korea or name her feelings, 

She seemed to be somewhere else entirely- a lost place

A dangerous place maybe, impossible to penetrate with thought

Worst fears realized-she knew the impossibility of her innocence returning

Dad marring the gulf enveloping her with his need to get us going.

Yesterday bands played over a public network as I sat in another room

There was something operatic, popular patriotic songs, Taps

Soaring voices, a tenor and speeches

About lost, brave buddies.
Mom can't hear now but she couldn't watch somehow,

Last year my son got about all the information

We'll ever have on my Uncle's last day on earth

A battle he did not survive, far from home, fighting a country still insane.

He died right after a leave to Seoul, Korea.

The day before Halloween,

He was in a battle for a hill, with  Chinese troops amassed- that was

Largely a suicide mission for those American troops,

But we couldn't tell Mom for long about it

She chose to retreat to her silence

In the restroom, to hide,  and wait us out.

My son said,

"Well Momma's got the papers and she can

Read it later." But I knew they'd disappear

She would not read it.

Even though it did tell her how he died,

As a part of a bigger struggle over a hill.

The battle for the hill of our many days here on earth, still being fought.

The unknown stories that they aren't here to tell

Fought on other shores, by kids who gave their lives

Just the age of my son, often, in the name of freedoms

I take too often for granted-maybe less so now than once

That my mom struggled a lifetime to push

To a place in her psyche to not go crazy contemplating,

To forgive and forget

Yet always remember.

This insanity that is war, caused through

The impulses of man-the inability

To communicate, to share

To will away from all our children-the sheer truth

Of what our beliefs will lead us to do-

Or lack of a belief in the sanctity of life-

Taken from us one day in a blink, my mother can tell you that.

Today is a day that we thank our parents

Our Uncles and Aunts, forefathers-our children

For something that is best represented in the silence that

Enveloped us as we searched for my Uncle

All we couldn't say to one another

All that mighty hymns, orchestras, performers

Cannot adequately capture in Washington song.

Perhaps found in the life on the grass watching there on the greens

Across the beautiful mornings in America today

On another beautiful Memorial Day in May.