Memorial Day

Memorial Day. When I was young it meant going to the cemetery with my family to put flowers on the graves of my grandfathers. I had never met my Grampa Mallory and I scarcely remembered my Grampa Davis. We would often pick up my grandmothers and bring them with us, or, if they had already been to plant their geraniums and petunias, we would go to their houses afterward for a visit and something to eat.

During the winter of my first year of the library, I lost both my grandmothers within three months. Now there were more geraniums to buy and no lemonade or cookies in familiar houses.

Memorial Day became something quite different when I became friends with soldiers. Having people whom you care about deployed to a war zone tends to make every day a kind of memorial day. Each time you get an instant message or an email or a phone call, you breathe a sigh of relief. You try to memorize everything the two of you talked about. If they called, you put the sound of their voice deep inside, somewhere you won't lose it..just in case.

My soldier memories are recent ones. But for many, Memorial Day stretches back decades. If you saw the news coverage of the hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists who made the trip to Washington, DC, in tribute to those who have served and to those who did not return, then in the throng of iron horses you may have seen a man named Bill who is a close friend of Jeff's father. He has ridden his motorcycle from the Texas Coast to our nation's capitol to be part of Rolling Thunder. He will be visiting The Wall for the first time and remembering, surrounded by thousands who will understand.

I have a dear friend who is also a Vietnam veteran. His name is Max. He lost friends in that war. He lost his legs and an arm in that war. Through sheer will and determination, he has created a life for himself that has been devoted to helping others, especially fellow veterans. He is generous and funny and insightful and he wakes up every day a living memorial to war.
We were chatting a few weeks ago when Max mentioned he had received paperwork in the mail that had included his birth certificate. He hadn't ever paid much attention to that document but on this occasion he took the time to read every word. He had lost his mom recently and seeing her name next to his made him pause and think about her. After a moment, he turned to the attached piece of paper and there waiting for him were the tiny, inked impressions of his infant feet. He stared his little toes.

"I miss my feet, " he said to me quietly. We cried on the phone, together.

Not long before he left for Iraq, Mitch came to my house. He brought with him a small bag of things he wanted me to hold on to for him. There was a postcard from Japan where he had taught. A set of his Army dog tags. A Beanie Baby black bear--bears grin and bear it and persevere. A page torn from a worn DeLorme Maine Gazetteer Atlas, which showed where his house was on a road called Pleasant Hill, across from Good Earth Farm where I had worked once upon a time. He said these items represented his life, a life to which he hoped to return. He asked me to keep these things to remind him of his life in case he came back and couldn't remember. He gave me a lapel pin from his uniform with the motto of his unit. "To the Last Man."

I have that pin here in Austin with me and I'm looking at it now as I write. On Saturday night, my phone rang. It was Brian calling to tell me he was in New Jersey. For those of us from New England, someone calling from New Jersey is rarely cause for celebration. It's New Jersey, after all. You celebrate once you've left. But for Brian, New Jersey looked like heaven. He and his unit were finally back on US soil, their long and challenging deployment to Iraq nearly over. A quick flight to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a week or so of out processing and he will be home in Washington, DC, hopefully for a long, long time.

Brian was my last soldier serving overseas. To the last man, my boys are home.