Today I attended a Memorial Day event at a unincorporated farming community. I understand the town (a cross-roads) has less than 500 residents. However a very important occasion for the community is a service of remembrance for veterans that went to war and did not return to the place of their birth. Many are buried in the cemetery located behind the meeting hall. The list begins with the war of 1812, with two dead. The Civil War shows twenty-nine, and WW I … The numbers grow much bigger. The list of untimely deaths concludes with the 1990 Gulf War. Most were men and women in the prime of their life.

A program for Memorial Day 2027 will have to be extended to include names “fed into the maw of war” by the current administration.

There, I have displayed my hand. No doubt you intuit that I have grave doubts concerning the meaning of the oft used phrase “sacrifice one’s life for one’s country.” Some will believe it “noble” as long as one’s community is convinced that it is. But not everyone has to agree.

Mention was made in some detail about the construction and founding of the memorial monument at the head of the cemetery. The monument features some of the names of those who didn’t return alive from foreign places. The monument is made of Mid-Western field stone. One of the stones is an axe-head made and used by an individual indigenous to the area. I wondered what happened to him/her, did they die of natural causes? Or were they expelled with their community when European immigrants coveted their land? We know the answer.

And what about the Vietnamese families who lost members to napalm, disease, or combat? If the dead could have their say, would they agree that dying for one’s country is a “win”?

We are kidding ourselves. At the ceremony I heard it said more than once, – I paraphrase “we live the way we live because someone gave their life…” I cannot follow that logic as more of my life is in the rear-view mirror. Everyone’s life is equally precious. Perhaps we just shouldn’t be living the way we live. If you personally, or your community isn’t directly attacked, there’s no good reason to kill another human being.

The carnage of war has been unending.

We might as well say that “dying for one’s country” is to die naturally.

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Header image is of a dead soldier at Gettysburg.

A friend offered this video by Katrina and The Waves, Walking On Sunshine. (Don’t it feel good?) Take a bit of relief from our meditation on death.