Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day. The holiday grew out of mourning for the dead on both sides in the Civil War.
"You can't talk about the Civil War or Memorial Day without talking about mourning,”
said one Civil War re-enactor interviewed during a Memorial Day celebration. "Almost every family, North and South, was touched by the war. And the holiday grew out of those families' efforts to honor their dead with spring flowers."
Maybe we shouldn’t talk about
any war without talking about mourning. The seriousness of loss and sacrifice seem to be diminished by contemporary statements like this one: “Memorial Day is about celebrating all people, all of our ancestors and forefathers who have created the world we live in today, who have paved the long road we walk down into the future. It is a day to celebrate and thank all these people who died to create what we have today.”
Before Decoration Day was officially established in 1868, women in both the south and the north were decorating the graves of their husbands, sons, fathers, and lovers.
According to the
US Army Center on Military History, while the war was still going on in 1864, women in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, started the practice. In 1865 the women of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Winchester, Virginia, were seen decorating the graves of Confederate dead. And in 1866, women of Columbus, Mississippi, lay flowers on both Union and Confederate graves.
David Merchant’s
Memorial Day History website says that although it came about because of the Civil War, “Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.”
Last year, Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq war vets carried signs at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument reading: "Veterans Remember Our Fallen Soldiers, Soldiers of the Other Side, and Innocent Civilians." Not all saw this as reconciliation. One official at the Memorial Day event tried to have them evicted from the site.
I don't see much reconciliation in death, unless it is this: each year, women everywhere continue to place flowers on the graves of soldiers and others who died in war. They are not just honoring their dead; they are mourning their loss--and the world's.
