Memorial Day 2026

This morning Sheila and I made our annual ceremonial pilgrimage to Sallisaw to decorate the graves of our parents.  As usual it was raining and we didn't get to contemplate the moment as we would have liked. 

This Memorial  Day was sadder than usual because most of the people we would have visited while we were in our old hometown have passed.  We're the last of our generation.  I wonder who, if anyone, will decorate our parent's graves when we are gone.

The days of families meeting at the cemetery on "decoration day," visiting with each other, perhaps having a picnic nearby and even having a hymn sing in the weathered old church building that was always located on the grounds of a country graveyard are long past.  That culture of respect for our passed loved ones is long gone.  This year, there was only one scant aisle of "decoration flowers" at Wal Mart and the selection was sparse and cheap.   

I also made my annual visit to the grave of Capt. Michael D. Casey, United States Army.  He died on my birthday in Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Viet Nam in 1970.  He was awarded the Silver Star for pulling several wounded members of his team to safety under heavy enemy fire before he was taken out himself.

I've done a lot of soul searching about why I obsessively visit his grave year after year, leaving the traditional veterans penny on his headstone as a sign of respect.  I didn't know the guy.  Barely met him.  He didn't even go to school locally.  He was a graduate of one of the last classes of the Oklahoma Military Academy.  This year the answer came to me.  Survivor guilt.  

In 1968 when I enlisted everybody knew the war in Vietnam was lost.  Not because we couldn't win but because the politicians in Washington preferred to play politics with it.  We could have been in Hanoi within thirty days or left it a smoking hole in the ground anytime we chose if there had been the political will.

But, the scum that had taken over the streets and college campuses of the U.S. were throwing rotten eggs at men in uniform, spitting on them, beating them up and insulting them both living and dead.  They brought the war to the streets of the U.S. in a way that no foreign power could have and defeated winning U.S. troops on the ground through political pressure.  Nobody in their right mind would risk dying in a war their country no longer cared about.  And yes, I do have real thing for hippies and left wingers.  A visceral thing.  They got a lot of good men in my generation killed.  Far better people than them.

When my time came the combination of my education and intelligence scores allowed me to serve honorably doing something besides carrying a rifle through the rice paddies of Southeast Asia.  I took advantage of the opportunity in a heartbeat.  When the time came for assignment to a theater of operations, I again had options.  I "dream-sheeted" for and was assigned to amphibious forces Atlantic Fleet, about as far from Southeast Asia as you could get.

I had my reasons.  I had a wife and a child to think about.  I was doing important, honorable work that most people couldn't.  At least I hadn't faked a medical condition through a cooperating doctor or rigged a just serious enough felony conviction through a cooperating judge that would magically disappear in a few years as some did.  I had ex-friends that did both.  Notice I say ex-friends.  

Logic told me I had nothing to be ashamed of.  But I was ashamed.  Getting to know the Marine grunts headed for "Nam" sobered me.  In my heart I knew that, dumb, loud, boisterous and sometimes dangerous as they were, they were better men than me.  I had worked the system to my advantage in ways that most of them couldn't.

But, it was the guys like Casey, the bright young career officers who were smart as a whip and the senior non-coms who knew how to game the system better than anybody that shamed me most.  They didn't have to be there either.  But, they were going and going back not because they wanted to but rather because it was their duty.  They shamed me to my core.

So if, God willing, I am around next Memorial Day, I will once again decorate my parent's graves, pay my respects, and then look up to see Captain Casey's headstone a few yards away.  I will once again walk over, pay my respects for a few moments and leave a veteran's penny as an outward sign of respect.

Hopefully next year there will be less guilt now that I have figured it out.     

The Morning After

It's the morning after and though I drank nothing but non alcoholic beer I am still a wreck.   

Yesterday was Sheila's 75th birthday.  I decided to go all out to make it a good one.  She refused a spa day and since I needed her out of the house to prepare for her surprise party I convinced her to work and save the vacation day for travel.

The plan was that our daughter and grandson would visit her at work and keep her there until the guests arrived at our home.  That didn't work out.  She made it home about five minutes before the first guests arrived.  But she was still surprised.  Kind of shocked actually.

The food was catered by our favorite hole in the wall Mex joint.  Since they speak no English my negotiating and ordering the food was an adventure in my broken Spanish with a little of their Spanglish thrown in.  As the two sweet little ladies were helping me carry the food to the car I told them it was "mi esposa's cumpleanos," my wife's birthday.  Huge smiles came across their faces as they wished her happy birthday in Spanglish.

A well known local blues musician was supposed to play for us.  He called at ten the morning of the party to let me know he couldn't make it.  An arthritis flare up.  Arthritis in the hands is a musician's curse.  So, I called a musician friend who lives just down the road and is usually up for small gigs.  He was already committed elsewhere. 

So, I provided what little entertainment there was singing and playing the uke.  That was a poor substitute for what I had planned but you work with what is available.  I think things were going OK.  I was doing jazz standards Leon Redbone style.  But then I did the St. James Infirmary Blues.  That may have been a little much. The looks on a some of the ladies faces were ..... well .... interesting.  But, I followed it with a hot version of Sweet Home Chicago and that brought most of the smiles back.

Charles Glenn, who among his many skills is a very talented professional photographer, set up a video rig in my office and as the evening progressed he would tap people on the shoulder and ask them to come back and record their birthday wishes on video.  He also shot some live video.   

The party went well.  There were good friends, good food and good fellowship.  Sheila had a great time.  That was the goal and I think by God's grace that happened.  I had prayed for the strength to get it all done and that prayer was answered.

My only regret was that we couldn't invite so many of the people we would have liked to.  I could only invite a couple of representatives of each of the separate social groups we are a part of.  Our home is tiny, a lot of them are elderly and need to sit and as it was there were still people standing around with a taco in one hand a drink in the other with barely room to move around. 

Today is going to be a tense day.  Sheila has an important doctors appointment this afternoon.  Serious decisions may have to be made.  I'm glad she had a great night before facing it.