Memorial Day always puts me into an emotional conflict.
When does respect for honorable and dutiful sacrifice begin to sanction the ill wills and greed that required it? Do we have any more righteous wars left in us? Did we ever?
I find myself thinking that, just like Valentine’s Day, this is another shitty holiday. Love deserves more than one calendar entry, so surely pain and loss does as well. The men and women lost to an aggressive will are remembered daily by their loved ones; why, as a nation, can’t we find time enough every day to do the same?
And maybe, just maybe, in that remembrance decide that throwing more children into the meat grinder won’t work any better than it did millennia ago?
Memorial Day is aptly named. Remember why war is the ultimate failure of everything that makes us human.