“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and sheroes.”
Maya Angelou
This is the first Memorial Day I can remember that’s been besieged by rain like this. Nonstop, from Friday afternoon through Sunday, New York has been gray and rainy. It’s 50 degrees and we’re a day away from June! Absolutely crazy weather.
It shouldn’t be like this, but all the gloom has me thinking about Memorial Day’s intended purpose: to commemorate the fallen men and women who gave their lives in service to this country. I have no doubt that many communities continue to celebrate with this in mind, but in my circles the long weekend marks the arrival of summer and not much else.
In some respects, this shift in meaning is very fortunte. Deaths of U.S. servicepeople are much rarer now than they were a decade ago, as we’ve gradually exited two wars. They’re far rarer than they were throughout the 20th century, when a little over 400,000 lives were lost and it would have been much more common to have a close friend or family member who had died.
But that’s poor consolation to those who continue to lose loved ones, and to the communities who bear the brunt of this loss. Our society is torn when it comes to the “right” way to teach history these days, but it seems one clear gap in our civic understanding is an appreciation of what our holidays truly mean. And that should start with commemorating those who have died making this country what it is.
I stumbled upon these two poems during my research, which I’d read before but never really absorbed. Well worth a read on this year’s Memorial Day weekend.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
– John McCrae
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
We Shall Keep the Faith
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
– Moina Michael
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
The One With All the Nostalgia
I spent many hours in my parents basement watching Friends over the years, often with my sister, sometimes with cousins or friends of my own. Our seasons were shoved into a cabinet beneath the TV, and bore the loving scars you’d find on an old game of Monopoly: Half the cases were broken or water damaged, none of the discs were in the right case and Season 8 was missing The One With the Halloween Party. That was my favorite season!
I binged the show in 6th grade when I first discovered it, and didn’t stop until sometime in college. That’s over a decade of watching and re-watching the same episodes, nonstop, without their getting old. Say what you want about the show, but that’s impressive longevity for anything. And I’m certainly not alone in my fandom – there’s a reason why so many others were always willing to just toss on any old episode and watch with me.
So I’m ashamed to say that the show’s recent reunion special, released last week on HBO, snuck up on me. I had no idea it was coming until I saw this headline in The Atlantic: Does the ‘Friends’ Reunion Hold Up? “Hold up? There’s a Friends reunion?!” Instead of reading the review, I went straight to the source, and two hours later – despite all the unfortunate Botox and plastic surgery – I was back on the good stuff, transported to my old basement couch with a fizzing glass of Coke, fast forwarding through the show’s intro with the right trigger of my PS2 controller. Oh, to be twelve again.
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating: nostalgia hurts. It’s a reminder that whatever we’re fondly remembering will never – can never – happen again. At least not like before. And so re-watching that first Ross and Rachel kiss cannot make my heart beat out of its chest like it used to. The romantic angst just isn’t there. Instead it’s the memory of those days that makes my chest ache. Where’d all the time go? What happened to DVDs?
A few weeks before Friends, my nostalgia manifested itself as a new obsession with high school lacrosse videos. Complete games, trick shots, player rankings. I was never nearly good enough to see myself in any of the footage, but just watching it makes me want a stick in my hand. Talk about a time I’ll never get back. No one ever tells you how much you’ll miss those hard practices until it’s ten years too late.
The bad news is that nostalgia is forever. We’ll never run out of past days to long for. But that’s also the good news. Memories continue to be made, and sprinkled throughout the years will be periods of such bright light that, decades later, we’ll feel sick to our stomachs thinking about them. The unease I feel, watching the Friends bloopers or this year’s MIAA championship game, will fade; something new will take its place.
Here’s one thing I am going to try, in a continuation of my life is short theme from the last couple of weeks:
Anticipate what I’ll feel nostalgic for in the future, and do more of it.
– Emmett
Recent Posts:
Training Update, May 28th – 2,700 calories worth of Shack Shack and the Welling Court Mural Project
What I’m Reading:
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds – James Clear
“We don’t always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.”
The Great Unmasking – David Brooks, NYT
“More lives are wrecked by the slow and frigid death of emotional closedness than by the short and hot risks of emotional openness.”
What I’m Watching:
Lucifer – Netflix
If Smallville, Suits and CSI had a baby
Lords of Dogtown – Amazon Prime
Not sure how I missed this movie until now. As someone with zero courage on a skateboard this movie makes me so jealous