Memorials and Other Things

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. — GK Chesterton

It’s Memorial Day, or Memorial Day Weekend at least. I know this because my various social media streams are absolutely flooded with overtly patriotic admonitions that this is NOT just the start of summer or a three-day excuse to roast hot dogs, drink beer and buy a car on sale. No, this is a serious time for reflection and solemnity! Show some respect!

Look, I get it, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, ok? Personally, I love both hot dogs and beer. When in Rome, you know? Americana abounds, and amidst all the ill-timed but appreciated gratitude for my service that I’ve been getting in heaps lately, I can’t help but find myself thinking back on other things.

Last week, in lieu of one remaining class this summer, I officially walked in my university’s graduation ceremony, cap, gown and all. Being that I am well older than the majority of fresh-faced graduates in the city these days, my particular cohort within the university is known as the School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Which is really just a polite way of saying I blew off college when I was seventeen and fresh out of high school to go do other things for a few years. Well, maybe more than a few years. Fine, twenty years. It’s been twenty long years. To be fair, I went back to school in earnest around 2002, but some of those “other things” made my academic career a series of starts and stops, short but intense periods of higher learning interspersed with longer stretches of marital strife, a mini-career I wasn’t particularly cut out for, multiple experiments in foreign diplomacy and disasters both humanitarian and inhumane, all bookended by doldrums of gluttonous self-doubt both long on excuses and light on motivation. Then about three years ago, I quit my job, moved back to New York and decided to return to school full-time. Just like that. I really wanted at least a couple of years of the no kidding, full-time college experience that I’d skipped in my youth and finishing a degree, any goddamn degree, was something I very much needed to do. Truthfully, it had become nothing less than a no holds barred grudge match against myself. I just didn’t want to end up at the point in life where someone could ask, “Oh, you never finished your degree?” And now I’ve done it, for the most part. Of course, I was never in danger of becoming a Rhodes scholar. I may not have been first in my class, but I wasn’t last, either. So, yay me!

By now, you’re probably wondering what the point of this little rant is, right? “It’s Memorial Day Weekend, you self-absorbed asshole! It ain’t all about you, man!” And you’re absolutely right. To be fair, I fully recognize that my story is no different from any one of my fellow classmates’ that sunny day in the Bronx. We’ve all had our obstacles and misadventures; I am not special. But I did have one ulterior motive for desperately wanting to graduate that the majority of them might not have, one that wasn’t as obvious unless you’d asked me about my footwear.

See, I wore boots to my ceremony. Old, filthy, well worn combat boots. Boots that I’d managed to carry with me for two overseas deployments, believe it or not. Nothing fancy, just the standard issue Infantry special. The kind you get from the unit supply sergeant, not the sexy, high-speed sneaker hybrids everyone orders online because they saw some Special Forces guys wearing them in the DFAC once. Just plain old Boots: Hot Weather, Desert Tan. I wore them with dark blue jeans so I wouldn’t stand out as That Guy too much, but I knew they were there. The point could be made that I wore them because, as I veteran, they’re more than a little indicative of who I am and the path that I’ve taken in life. And that’s a valid representation, if not a little too on the nose for my taste. I get it, there’s strong symbolism there. These boots made for walking, that took me across the world and back again, also brought me to where I am today, yadda yadda yadda…

No, the true reason I wore them wasn’t to remind myself of what I’ve accomplished and what it took to get here. It wasn’t to prove anything to anyone else. I wore them so I’d remember all those who no longer have the chance to accomplish the same thing for themselves. I stood tall in those boots because I had a responsibility to graduate; to finish what I started for those men and women who also chose to do other things and paid for that sacrifice with their lives. By sheer dumb luck, I am here and they are not. And that comes with a price for me as well. Many a night, when it was a two-hour commute home after classes all day and giving up was the only thing on my mind, I’d physically tell myself why I was here and for whom I was doing it for. It’s a privilege, all stop. I am here because they cannot be. There will be no days for them to bitch about midterms and finals, worry about GPA’s and getting into grad school, laugh ironically that their beard is more grey than the hipster professor’s or dissect the moral philosophy of dating a sophomore easily ten years their junior. Wondering if they are too old for this is something only we take for granted. They will never be old. Nothing I have been through compares to the void left for parents who won’t have a child’s graduation to go to. Generations of children have not had a parent there to see them graduate. All of those stories have been permanently bookmarked half way through. I have the luxury of looking back on the crazy ride it’s been so far because of those sacrifices. I was lucky enough to have men like Keoki Yomes, Gil Martinez and Eugene Aguon on that ride with me at different times. Those are days I could never and should never forget.

So this weekend, we do have a responsibility to those no longer with us. It’s serious and painful and it’s absolutely necessary. We need to remember those we lost. But we also have a responsibility to be our best selves in their memory, to be the kind of men and women we remember them to be. Have some fun; go do other things. I hope you do have a barbecue, open a beer and let the kids run through the sprinkler. Shoot off some fireworks, take some pictures, and make some new memories. And every now and then, maybe think of those gone while you do it. We owe them that.