Grace Ross: Honoring Fallen Soldiers by Rededicating Our Lives

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Grace Ross, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

“That government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” – Gettysburg Memorial from Lincoln’s address.

While placing flowers on graves is an ancient tradition, it is said that in 1861-62 women in the south officially started a tradition towards the end of May of placing flowers and other decorations on the graves of fallen soldiers. Before the end of the Civil War, women placed flowers purposefully on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers, southern and northern soldiers, even before the conflict had been resolved.

Like the initiation of Mother’s Day, this was the holiday women created to reach beyond the conflicts and basis for war, to strive for an acknowledgement of lost lives on both sides; they sought to reach beyond the sentiment fuelling armed conflict to peace.

It is argued that because women carry the lives of our children inside us for nine-plus months that women give a special value to human life. In fact, in the Iroquois nations while the chiefs were men, for a call for war to be accepted and ratified, it was the council of women – women elders – who had to sign off on the war. At some fundamental level as a society they understood that it was women who valued the true cost of a lost life better than men did.

Memorial Day then was born from a desire to bring a torn nation back together. The loss of life in the U.S. Civil War was so extreme, given the population of the country at the time, that it tore apart lives and families in all regions of the country.

Memorial Day was a special call, a call to reach beyond the divisiveness, beyond the desire to prove who’s right and who’s wrong, to simply honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

It is perhaps why I’m so profoundly drawn to the Gettysburg Memorial.

Gettysburg like the Arlington Cemetery and several others were actually created after the war, when the dead from both sides were purposefully buried together in a cemetery where the loss of life in this incredibly divisive battle could be honored by both sides. Originally, the day was called Decoration Day specifically to acknowledge those lives lost by decorating all the graves.

The statement at Gettysburg Memorial that I opened this piece with I think must call to a deeper meaning this Memorial Day. As we mourn and memorialize lives lost, we must ask what we ourselves will do that government of, by and for the people not perish from this earth?

As we move to a time when a tiny percentage of the people in our country have the means and money to buy not only whatever they want while the vast majority of us struggle to hold our economic ground, keep a roof over our heads and decent paying jobs and food on the table; they actually have enough money to buy and sell votes and to buy and sell the policies of our government.

It is arguable that if we truly rededicate ourselves to the lost lives of soldiers from all sides as we are called to do on Memorial Day, we must also ask ourselves what is the truth of the deeper struggle?

That struggle first led by non-violent action in the birth of this country and then by violent defense when the British tried to retake the Massachusetts Colony, we have to ask ourselves, do we still have that commitment? It led to a government by and for the people. And it was that aspiration four score and seven years later that Lincoln harkened back to in his Gettysburg remarks.

Do we still honor the fallen lives of the Civil War and Revolutionary War by living our lives, rededicating our energies that government of, by, and for the people must not perish from this earth?