Tag: Veteran’s Day

The Last Post … Sort Of

Happy anniversary to me.

I started this blog a year ago today. I wasn’t sure then whether I would successfully make it to today or not. Publication wise.

But I did. I published a post every day of varying quality and length for a whole year.

Mission accomplished.

Do you know the haunting musical lament The Last Post? Usually played on a trumpet and followed by two minutes of silence, it is meant to honor those who lost their lives in the Great War.

It is a standard offering at the annual Canadian Remembrance Day services on November 11th across the country. (Known as Veteran’s Day in the US.)

It is a musical thread of continuity that, when we hear it, can snap us back to a particular time or place.

My strongest memory of The Last Post was hearing it played at my father’s funeral in 2005. A couple of his Legion buddies showed up at the service to pay their respects.

When the eulogy and all other elements of the service had been delivered, to close the ceremony, they played The Last Post to send Dad onwards.

The two minute scratchy trumpet solo was played on a handheld cassette tape player held aloft for better hearing by the gathered mourners. It was both moving and comical.

It could have been a scene in a TV series about an old soldier who had lived and died in the countryside among unsophisticated folk who were salt of the earth. And a touch salty, too, if memory serves.

In the end, all that mattered was that Dad’s old buddies showed up to send him off. The low quality of the recording notwithstanding. They showed respect to an old veteran who had done his bit when called upon to do so.

None of us really knows what happens when we die. It is – outside birth itself – life’s biggest mystery. There is no end of speculation about consciousness continuing after we die. Maybe.

I am inclined to think consciousness does continue in some form even though I have no clue what that form might be. Energy doesn’t die only transmogrifies. (Love that word~!)

Reincarnation and its variants are a preferable alternate to the “once and done” end of life theory that so many realists expound and insist upon with just as little evidence for their certainty.

If we don’t really know anyway, what harm is there in believing the more comforting scenario?And then there is that Ouija board session that utterly convinced me there is another side. That is a story for another time however.

I say farewell today in a similar low-key fashion. No big production or insights to share. Just a wistful sense of gratitude and completion in achieving a goal.

I’ve promised to share posts occasionally going forward as and when moved to do so. If a new writing venture develops, I’ll share that news with you, too.

Next week, I am going to a writing retreat. Today and tomorrow, I will rest and see what fills in the space this blog occupied in my life all this year.

Other than that, no concrete plans. Blessedly.

As with most aspects of life, the future is not completely in my control anyway.

I think I’ll just settle in to enjoy the ride wherever it leads.

Thanks for following along.

I’ll likely pop up in your inbox now and then as promised.

We’ll see what happens next

Maggymac out, with much gratitude for the ride and the company.

Thank You In Advance

What ever would the world do without war? How ever would it have evolved without brave men and women who donned uniforms and weapons when called upon and did their bit “for the side”?

The two latest world wars seemed to have a clear sense of purpose. In my Dad’s eyes, the goal of World War Two was simple: “Defeat Hitler.”

Our debt to veterans is honored on one day each year on this continent. Remembrance Day, it is called, in Canada. Veteran’s Day in the US. There may be similar occasions honoring the fallen in other countries but my research has not advanced that far.

Those who fought for our freedom paved the way for us to continue a way of life. That can be argued ad infinitum but is simply out of place on Remembrance Day on Saturday this year.

I was always struck by how deeply Remembrance Day services affected me. There is something profoundly moving and tender about watching declining old men and women rise shakily from their lawn chairs.

They gain their footing and toss off their lap quilts to salute their flag. Of course, we see broken old people and cannot see the strong, youthful soldiers they remember in their minds’ eye.

War is easy to forget and discount if you aren’t touched by it personally. For my parents, it was a huge and affecting chunk of their adulthood that solidified their pride in and allegiance to their country. It gave them a common purpose and a common cause.

Hitler made an easy, if evasive, target. He was so unarguably evil and psychotic. He surrounded himself with similarly sick souls who shared his inhumanity. Sadly, the harsh truth is that bullying and intimidation are effective short-term tools for pulling and keeping people in line. RIP six million Jews. Hitler’s brownshirts were merely thugs and criminals and they were good at it.

It baffles me how widespread and entrenched the banality of evil can be. Most local Germans living close to concentration camps refuted any knowledge of what had “really been going on”. Perhaps the worst is, had they known, what would or could they have done?

It was heartening in the wake of World War Two to see many international cooperation organizations emerge. Devoted to achieving and maintaining – if not global world peace exactly – then overarching institutions dedicated to wide scale cooperation and information sharing.

The United Nations. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Food and Agriculture Organization. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The World Health Organization. The World Bank. And more than a dozen others.

Spotty and underwhelming as the overall record of United Nations organizations may be, it serves the world to have them in place. Yes, they are big, gangly organizations that don’t have a great track record at fulfilling their mandates or promises of defusing conflict or stopping wars. But I would argue, it is better we have them than not.

The world when the last World Wars took place is not remotely the same world as it is today. Young people today have little to no connection to the costs of war or what exactly the evil was that our ancestors fought.

It is good to have international organizations who ostensibly have an eye on the “big picture” as concerns the world. It is also good that our present military and government sets aside a day a year to thank our veterans.

It serves to remind us who were not there of what others lost and gained for our benefit. Their sacrifice was not only of time. Their youth, and youthful ideals, rarely came home from the front intact.

So I will plant myself somewhere quiet on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour. I will happily spend two minutes to remember those who went before to fight for our freedom and protect us from living in oppression.

I don’t mean to sound like Pollyanna. I don’t much like war either. And, of course, I wish there were better ways to resolve conflict. But November 11th isn’t really about any of that.

It is a collective expression of honor and respect for those gutsy men and women who joined up to join forces against evil when they were most needed. What they left behind is not perfect by a long shot. But they did accomplish this.

Theoretically, we can follow our own inner dictates to build the lives we want. Imperfect, I realize. But when we celebrate our collective victory over the failure of that twisted little Austrian, I know my thanks are abundant. Simply because we don’t have to live in a regime according to the dictates of him and his fellow henchmen.

For that reason alone, I happily say thank you day after day after day to my many ancestors who served, and I will say a special thank you, especially this coming Saturday.

RIP Dad RIP Scott RIP Monty RIP Joyce RIP Frank, et. al.