Memorial Day in Virginia

This morning, the Boston Globe published some beautiful photos of Memorial Day celebrations around the country. Our remembrance was localized, though we tried to retain some of the spirit Dave wrote about last year, especially when we saw the Rolling Thunder riders around DC on Sunday.

After some box hauling, we walked through the University of Virginia Confederate Cemetery with both compassion and confusion. The site holds the remains of 1097 Confederate soldiers who died at the Charlottesville General Hospital during the war and were denied admission to Arlington National Cemetery.

The site is inscribed: "Fate denied them Victory, but clothes them in glorious Immortality." Earlier in the day, visitors to the columbarium placed roses on the soldier's graves. For the first time, I finally understood what it meant to say that American soldiers fight for our freedom.

It's hard to fully make sense of that with the wars of my lifetime, but seeing this monument to the peculiar institution and the immortality of the Confederacy, I understood how other soldiers, Union soldiers, did fight for our freedom.

Memorial Day was created in 1868, just following the Civil War, "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 churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but Posts and comrades will, in their own way, arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit."

Does that apply to the Confederate soldiers, some of whom were also veterans of the War of 1812? Virginia doesn't officially celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, leaving yesterday a day to honor all the war dead. Each time we joke to our Northern friends and family that we live in the Confederacy, we think of the Confederate flags, still manufactured, still purchased by our citizen-neighbors and placed in memorial on gravestones less than two miles from our home or hung lovingly on porches. It feels disingenuous to celebrate the Confederate dead while thousands of unmarked graves and burial sites in this area contain slave remains and receive no flowers, no flags. A peculiar institution to live in, in 2009, so long since the fighting, but not so long since new flags were purchased and new roses were strewn...

Lest we leave everyone believing it was a day of sorrow, we invite you to see our matching tee-shirts, adorned with our NATIONAL flag, the one unifying our old home and new one, reminding us of those who fought to defend our freedom at home and abroad.

And, of course, dessert for the weary. We're saving the flag cake for the 4th of July, so in the meantime, it's was strawberry shortcakes for us. What better way to proclaim our heritage?

Life in the South continues to feel normal yet appalling, day after day. It's a lesson in balance, in moving forward while remembering the past. This morning, serendipitously, I found a link to these great 5th graders from New York, singing choral version of modern songs. They're terrific! And to think what those damn flags would mean to them...