Remember to Remember this Memorial Day

Dear Memory Keepers:

The Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic and a native of Murphysboro, Illinois, John A. Logan codified today’s holiday in General Order #11, issued on May 5, 1868. It reads in part:

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit... If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us. 

The act of decorating graves with spring flowers goes back as far as human history, but decorating graves following the Civil War was particularly poignant as a grieving nation wrestled with the fresh memories of war’s brutality. 

Only three years prior had the now assassinated President Lincoln challenged the nation in his second inaugural address: 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

It is significant to note how this day as an expression of reconciliation was recognized not by the victorious but by the vanquished, not by the celebratory families of the Union, but by the grieving mothers and widows of the Confederacy.

From a newspaper account reprinted in 1872 by Horace Greeley in the New-York Tribune:

On April 25, 1866, mothers of confederate soldiers gathered in Columbus, Mississippi, where Friendship Cemetery houses the remains of men killed during the battle of Shiloh in 1862 and of others who died in the Columbus Military Hospital. Included in their number were between 1,400 and 1,500 Confederate soldiers and between 40 and 100 Union soldiers who died as prisoners of war. 

Like other early observances, the one at Columbus was spontaneous. During the early spring of 1866, several local women had busied themselves with tending the graves of the Confederate dead. Inspired by their example, other women joined them in a public memorial on April 25. All who participated carried with them spring flowers with which to decorate the graves. They arrived at the cemetery in a procession led by young girls in white dresses. These were followed by wives and widows dressed in black, and by carriages bearing elderly participants. At the graves, members of the procession formed themselves into a square while they listened to a prayer and a commemorative speech before placing their flowers on the graves of their dead. 

As if with a single spontaneous impulse, they then remembered the Union dead who also lay nearby and turned to lay magnolia blossoms upon the graves of their former enemies. 

Word of the generous gesture spread rapidly, evoking an appreciative response in the North. Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune commented: 

The women of Columbus, Mississippi, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.

Now, more than 150 years later, I believe the taproot of Memorial Day commemorations lies not in the celebration of war’s bloody valor, but in the far more disciplined labors for peace. Regardless of the outcome, the sacrifice of those we recognize today is only redeemed by our dedication to their longing desire for all to dwell in peace.

As a counselor and pastor, I have witnessed the ravages of battle fatigue weighing heavy on the minds and hearts of those who served, often many years after the military hostilities have been silenced. With post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD, the conditions of memory become dissociated from current experience, creating anxiety, depression and confusion as the sufferer continues to weigh experiences and choices in circumstances where others have no clue of the sacrifices made.

I would suggest that we as a people, we as a nation, collectively risk the same disorders of stress if we fail to put war’s ravages in their place. Without appropriate memory for those fallen, without honor and explanation for the battles and wars we have waged, we risk in our forgetfulness a repression of grief, until within us rages hostility without reason and anxiety without purpose.

And so, on this day, as in the words of Harry Truman in his radio address to the armed forces on April 17, 1945, after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces during World War II,

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan. 

This is not a day for living comrades to commemorate those fallen, nor is it a time to romanticize the sacrifices of the warrior; it is a day for every man and woman of this grateful nation to dedicate themselves again to reasons for peace.

Resisting the dangers of forgetfulness, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor