Memorial Day Memorandum.
When I spent Memorial Day at a Confederate Cemetery. CW- War.
Pools open, beach weekend trips and the countdown to school ending begins! The end of May in the USA is celebrated as Memorial Day.
Also known as decoration day and not to be confused with Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day is a way to remember and celebrate the people who died while serving the country’s military.
In a lot of ways, Memorial Day reminds me of Dia de los Muertos in my country, a way to celebrate the dead, but it couldn’t be an American Holiday without the mark of Capitalism, Imperialism and Racism. In Uruguay Dia de los Muertos is typically a warm day in November. Summer is just around the corner there too, with it lots of cold treats and food, as well as a trip to the cemetery to clean up and decorate and honor the graves of our loved ones.
Having lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia for almost 20 years the iconic lighting of the Luminaries at the National Cemetery on Lafayette Blvd. has become a favorite tradition. A few years ago a friend (no longer a friend) told me to check out the lighting of the luminaries at a different cemetery in town. The Confederates he told me, have a different celebration and perhaps I’d be interested in taking photos for a photography series about death and bereavement I have been working on and off for a few years now.
I went, prepared to be asked to leave at any moment or worse, so when I was greeted by older white ladies in period clothing, with syrupy, slow, Southern accents, I was a little disarmed by the Southern charm. They offered me sweet tea and cookies and asked some questions about my camera. As I told them about Modern Memento Mori they seemed relieved and even offered to pose for photographs, one handed me a lighter and asked if I would like to help light the candles on the graves.
Reluctant, I took the lighter and walked to the emptiest side of the cemetery, there I sat as bunnies ran to and from the graves as the southern light faded. The utter peace of the moment shattered by bullet shots. I look around. Dressed in confederate gray a squad of civil war re enactors shot rememberance shots up in the air as the audience whooped and hollered. Wondering how I ended up being asked to light a candle for, on top of the final resting place of someone whom would have seen me as lesser than a person, someone whom would eat my family alive I considered my options. Then this woman in her forties came from behind me. She was dressed almost like a cow girl. If she weren’t on a Southern cemetery she’d look like she belonged at a comic con. She asked what I was doing there, talked about the weather and then told me I was standing in front of the grave of her great great great grandmother or something like that. “I am dressed like her now” she said with a smile. She began the story something about her grandmother being a strong woman caught in a bad situation and explained that when the North and South began warring, her male relatives got swept up to go serve the South. Eventually her grandmother found herself alone at home and on the Union troops path. They were becoming a threat. And so she dressed down, took on a horse and joined her sons in the battle field. She went on to talk about how for a lot of people the war was more about the aggression the North brought down to the Southern states, noble and kindly and not at all racist. Trying to leave the conversation I agreed that this was a fearless move, not before being asked if I could snap a photograph. She thanked me with tears in her eyes for coming to light the candle and said she’d like to light her family’s candle herself. I gladly gave her the ligther I had forgotten was in my hand. I contemplated the complexities of sharing humanity with people when grieving their kin, their pride in the odd battles presented to those people and the decisions made and the lives lived and the shared bonds of blood and birth. On this account I cannot relate, having attachment for people whom I never met, interacted and as far as I know have been a source for pain in my family isn’t where I would start my healing process but I am not judging, just saying knowing what I know about the man, I never visited the grave of my grandfather whom was abusive to my mother and grandmother and I probably never will.
There is ancestral energy you do not want to honor and hone.
I also thought on the absurd juxtaposition of American flags with Confederate battle flags (an enemy army) trumpets played and shots fired for. When you think of the losing side of a war the realities of war like mass graves and disappeared peoples comes to mind, or they are erased out of the narrative altogether here in the South of the USA where the Confederates are so different than any other losing side in history. Down here they enjoy monuments and statues and avenues to their generals and their presidents, parades and national holidays and the ability to rewrite the historic facts about the war and brainwash generations with a romanticized version of history.
Historical facts, a call to empathy and WWJD attitude does not change their minds, instead they derail the conversation with false equivalencies (“Why isn’t white pride allowed but gay pride is?”), false facts and flawed logic.
All to avoid acknowledging that the civil war was in no way civil and the Southern tradition was not genteel and it isn’t to this day.
I realize that what hung so thick in the air that day was the justifications you make over and over again when you deep down inside know something is wrong and keep quiet. This type of cognitive dissonance feels like that of humidity in the South. It is stifling.
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