What happens to Memorial Day when nobody serves?

Decoration Day - the predecessor of today's Memorial Day - was established in the aftermath of the War of Southern Independence*.  There were essentially no families untouched by that charnel house.  When co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826 and I grew up in the 1960s, the Second World War was still fresh in the nation's memory.  No families were untouched by casualty, and Memorial Day parades were a key event in towns across the land.

But today's wars are fought with a much smaller military.  Casualty reports are smaller, and simply don't effect many people.  As one of the soldiers remarked from Iraq: America's not at war.  We're at war.  America is at the Mall.

But not quite everyone.  Some hear the Call, and some of them die.  Those left behind know the full meaning of Memorial Day.  I posted this eight years ago, and it is worth thinking about today.  Christian Golczynski is now 20 years old and going to the University of Alabama on a scholarship from the Marine Corps Foundation.

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Memorial Day isn't about barbecues for Christian Golczynski.  He was eight years old when LTC Ric Thompson handed him the flag that had draped his father's coffin.  That was nine years ago.

This weekend will be the ninth Memorial Day where he won't be thinking about barbecues.  Next month will be the ninth Father's Day with an empty chair at the dinner table.

That is what Memorial Day is about.

I've posted this song a number of times over the last few years, as it captures in music the sound of a heart breaking.  The song alternates between memories of the loved and lost, and the stumbling emptiness as the singer tries - and fails - to make sense of the loss.  It's not your typical sentimental Country music song, it's pure, distilled, 100 proof grief.

For some, that is what Memorial Day is about.

There is no official music video for this song; Messina is no longer the chart topping singer that she was in the 1990s.  But people have taken this music and found photographs that amplify the music and make it personal.  The second picture in the video is one that I found particularly moving - nearly as much as the one of young Mister Golczynski shown here.

This is what Memorial Day is about. 



Heaven Was Needing A Hero (songwriter: Jo Dee Messina)

I came by today to see you
Though I had to let you know
If I knew the last time that I held you was the last time,
I'd have held you and never let go
Oh it's kept me awake night wonderin'
Lie in the dark, just asking "why?"
I've always been told you won't be called home until it's your time

I guess Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

I remember the last time I saw you
Oh you held your head up proud
I laughed inside when I saw how you were, standing out in the crowd
You're such a part of who I am
Now that part will just be void
No matter how much I need you now
Heaven needed you more

'Cause Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

Yes, Heaven was needing a hero...that's you.

Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby is justly famous:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Christian Golczynski also laid a sacrifice on that same altar of our freedom, a sacrifice costly beyond our reckoning.  I hope that the fullness of time will ease his anguish as well.  I fear that it will not.

That is what Memorial Day is about.  Not a barbecue in sight, just pure, 100 proof grief.  This weekend as you go about your normal business of life, remember SSgt Marcus Golczynski.  And Christian.  And what that sacrifice means.  May this Republic be worthy of them.

* It wasn't a "Civil War" because the South didn't want to take over the North.  "War Between The States" is not specific about the issue involved.