Memorial Day

It's Monday. Not really Memorial Day, but Memorial Day. I guess it doesn't matter, because it is a man-designated "holiday" in the first place. Holiday means holy day, you know, and so it seems to me an oxymoron to call a man-decided-upon day holy. I know there are flaws in my thinking here. 

By the way, I remember my mother speaking of the day as Decoration Day. That was its name formerly

So the actual day is not the thing to focus on. It's a day for remembering the soldiers (originally Civil War soldiers) who have given up their lives for this country. It's an easy-to-say phrase: "they gave their lives." And I think we too often say it with no thought of what it means or the great sadness that can come from the death of even one person.

Lucile took her roses and went up to the cemetery and placed the roses on the head stone of our mother and father. They are both long dead but not soldiers in this country's military. Perhaps I can call them soldiers in the forever battle of goodness over whatever its opposite is, or are. Are because there are many forms and faces of evil and many degrees of it.

Lucile sent a picture of the grave via cellphone text. What an age we live in. The age of immediacy, of everything right now, of people not knowing how to be patient or that they ought to be.

I did not go to Wayne's grave today, and I do not know if anyone in the family did. I have felt guilty about it, but it doesn't mean I don't love him.