Memorial Weekend has become a time for sales, barbeques, beaches, picnics, and vacation time. Others decorate graves, attend Memorial Day services at cemeteries, or attend a parade. However Americans choose to observe the three-day weekend, they may pause to give credit for their freedom to members of the armed forces of the past, present, and future.
The tradition of placing flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers was first observed nationally three years after the Civil War in 1868. Major General John A. Logan chose May 30 as Decoration Day because flowers would be blooming then. The first large observance took place at Arlington National Cemetery where flowers were strewn on both Union and Confederate graves.
The first time Jim and I visited Arlington in the 1980s, we were awestruck by the size! We thought we could just walk around and find graves of famous people, but since the cemetery was spread over 657 acres, we chose to do what most reasonable tourists do and bought tickets for the tour bus.
Since we caught the last tour of the day, we had to quickly visit each site and board the same bus. The bus stopped for the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Everyone hustled past the Memorial Amphitheatre except Jim. I hung back to see why he wasn’t joining the crowd.
“We are going to miss the changing of the guard,” I said.
Jim stood in front of Audie Murphy’s grave marker videotaping. “This is what I wanted to see more than anything,” he said. I understood why Jim was so entranced with the gravesite. Jim had already worn out several videotapes of To Hell and Back, the movie about the true story of Audie Murphy starring Murphy as himself.
This incident is etched into my memory as an example of Jim’s unique view of life. He was more intrigued by a simple grave marker of a man he admired than by a ceremony.
After several minutes, we walked toward the crowd and saw part of the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
As we walked back to the bus, Jim said, “I want to be buried here.”
“That’s not a good idea,” I argued, “because I wouldn’t be able to visit your grave.”
He smiled and put his arm around me. It was just a passing thought and not something he dwelled on.
Later, he chose a place in Colorado where he wanted his ashes spread. Maybe he remembered my remarks about Arlington, because he said, “It might be nice to have some place that family could visit too. Maybe a marker somewhere.” When Jim passed away, his body was cremated and we honored his wishes to spread half of his ashes in the designated place.
I knew I’d found the perfect place for Jim’s marker when I saw the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Higginsville, which has the beauty and grace of Arlington on a much smaller scale. I knew Jim well enough to know that had he seen the Missouri Veterans Cemetery, he would have preferred it to Arlington. After military honors, the remainder of Jim’s ashes were place in a niche in a columbarium that overlooks a small lake.
Annually, on Memorial Day, a crowd gathers for a ceremony to honor the veterans buried on the site. I can’t help but imagine that, in spirit, Jim will be fishing in the lake, ignoring the ceremony, being his own person, doing his own thing.
Copyright © May 2024 by L.S. Fisher
http://earlyonset.blogspot.com
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