Memorial

Memorial Day is a holiday built to commemorate all military personnel who died in service to their nation. Many have stretched the ceremony to also involve visiting our loved ones in cemeteries and cleaning up their plots. I was thinking about this because Jon Swanson wrote about it so wonderfully. (Go read it. I'll wait.)

It's important to remember the dead. I also think it's important to be able to celebrate people while they can still attend the experience. Why do we forget to have events to memorialize and commemorate the lives of others while they're still above ground?

Memento Mori

We live in an age where we really don't want to think about death, and where we want to throw away anything we think of as old. Why are we afraid to celebrate the wisdom in our circles? Why do we think that "this new way" can't be built from the hard earned experiences of those who brought the story forward unto this point.

The phrase "memento mori" means "you will die," or variations to that effect. The very literal term is "remember to die," which sounds like a weird to-do list item. People like to reference it as a way of saying that they like stoic thinking (which is fine), but I often think about this interpretation (which isn't exactly accurate):

It's a reminder to live by also honoring the dead.

Some people don't have a person they miss after they've passed. Others have people that they're glad they're gone and hope the world forgets about them. Our lives are always complicated. Why wouldn't our deaths be, as well?

Remember to Die

I was reading a book about writing called "Take Off Your Pants ." (Pause: truly one of the most brilliant writing book titles of all time ever.) The idea of the title is just to say that some fiction writers do so "by the seat of their pants" which means no structure or plot. But that's not the part I'm talking about. I had one of those "I was today years old when I learned" moments.

The other talks about the themes of the children's book Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. You probably remember the book. It's about Wilbur the Pig, and he's worried that he's going to be sold off to be eaten by some nice family, and then a nosy spider named Charlotte gets involved and helps Wilbur by writing messages about him. She becomes his hype man. "Some pig," she writes, and for a while, people stop wanting to eat Wilbur.

The author, Libbie Hawker, tells us that the big point of Charlotte's Web is about confronting death. Wilbur doesn't want to deal with death. He's afraid of it. He wants to avoid it, which we're supposed to know is impossible. The trick twist in the story is that Charlotte dies before Wilbur, forcing him to confront death before he has to think of his own. And that's the point of the story, basically. We all have to deal with death.

This is a children's book.

I thought it was about a pig and a spider who were friends. Clearly, I wasn't the brightest sock in the fridge.

Memorial Day

I'll honor the dead. I won't visit the gravestones of my family (four or more hours away on a huge travel weekend because everyone's opening their camps). But I'll think about my grandparents, who I miss every day. I'll think about the military people who died in service (and I'll even remember those who were in the military and died when they got home - because "remember").

But I'll also ask that you remember to celebrate and honor the wisdom all around you. Look at those people with gray or white or no hair and remember that they were fiery, they were warriors, they were out there doing important things and learned a lot that they bring forward.

Remember to celebrate those who lived before they die. Commemorate and make their memorials come before their burials.

Celebrate these lives that brought us here.

Remember.

Chris...