There is an old retort, used between intimates when they are annoyed with one another: You remind me of an old song, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"
Many a truth is said in jest. I am reminded of this on Memorial Day. This holiday was intended to honor military dead. However, in my working class youth, it was the time to go to cemeteries with flowers and plants for graves of dead relatives. Grave sites were tidied. Dead plants removed. New plants planted. Prayers said and teary eyes dabbed with handkerchiefs.
The most baffling of these pilgrimages was the trip to my maternal grandfather's grave with his widow and my parents. The man had been ejected from the family for violent, abusive behavior. He had died a homeless derelict, totally incapacitated by his alcoholism. Yet we tended his grave annually. His widow, my grandmother, wept profusely. The rest of us wandered about until she was done. I struggled to reconcile the vitriol heaped on his memory all year long with these uncomfortable moments of bereft grief at his grave. Did not compute.
As I have grown older, I have realized that memorials are for the living, not the dead. The dead have no consciousness of memorials. This is fortunate for them. Who would want to be conscious of being buried under tons of marble?
If human beings could harness the energy of grieving over the past and apply it to doing good in the present, the world would be a much better place. If we could stop to realize that we will all be separated by death inevitability, perhaps we would deal with being together more mindfully and compassionately. If all the money and resources devoted to memorials for the dead were reallocated for helping to improve the lives of the living, the greater good would be served.
