If you are viewing this blog on 25 May 2026, it is Memorial Day.  The name has become a conflation of the original meaning and purpose, and modern culture because it falls at the end of the first big "holiday" weekend of the summer season - a time for barbecues, getting together with family and friends, or beginning vacations in places near and far.  The big wars in these United States of America are events studied in history classes and seem very far away from the thoughts of many, with the exception of those in military families and/or those who have lost loved ones and friends who died in wars.  

But early observances of something like Memorial Day began after the Civil War, which was so bloody and horrible that many understood the need to keep something like this from happening again.  According to the Wounded Warrior Project, some 620,000 people lost their lives.  Due to more scientific and statistical evidence, that number is now thought to be closer to 700,000.  

The name "Decoration Day" (as Memorial Day was originally called in 1868) actually lasted until 1971 when it was established as a federal holiday and officially became Memorial Day.  I highly recommend two articles written by Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling the first of which appeared on 24 May 2024 in The Bulwark on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.  This man who has served his country for 38 years takes time to be by himself every Memorial Day to remember lives lost.      https://www.thebulwark.com/p/memorial-day-make-it-matter

I also encourage you to read this year's article by Hertling for the Bulwark "The Last Measure, Quietly Remembered" in which he talks about the wooden box he keeps on his desk with 253 laminated cards with photographs of soldiers he served along side of or commanded on two tours of duty in Iraq.  "I still open that box every day. And on a recent Memorial Day, I thought about how, while the nation pauses briefly to remember them once a year, their families never truly stop mourning them."    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/memorial-day-2026-the-last-full-measure-quietly-remembered 

In another part of the article, Hertling writes:  "During one of my combat tours, when I was an assistant division commander to my friend and mentor General Marty Dempsey, he suggested at a soldier’s memorial service that we all should “make it matter.” He was calling us to consider the excruciating loss of each of our soldiers, and to commit to living a life worthy of everything they sacrificed."   "That expression—“Make it matter”—is engraved on a small wooden box I keep on my desk."  "Because I can’t walk through all the cemeteries across our country where those young soldiers now rest, I spend a bit of time looking through the pictures after I toast their memory."    
 

The National Cemetery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 
  National Cemetery Santa Few, New Mexico 2
National Cemetery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1

I end with a poppy, which, since World War 1, has represented the devastation of that war and those who perished.  Canadian physician and Lieutenant- Colonel John McCrae memorialized the area that lay in the Belgian provinces of West and East Flanders and the French department of Nord, in his poem "In Flanders Fields".  He had performed a burial service himself for a friend in 1915 after the Second Battle of Ypres, noticing how quickly the poppies had sprung forth on the field between the graves of those who had died in the battle. 

"In Flanders fields, the poppies blow^[a]
     Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below."

-from Wikipedia

 

Flowers - Poppies (3 of 4)

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had written the words below for a Jefferson Day broadcast on April 13, 1945.  He died on 12 April, 1945.  

"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars."

On this Memorial Day 2026

enjoy your time with friends and family, and

make it matter.

Thanks to Steve, TTT, Jean & Sam, Fernando, Fred, and Ingrid for your words about last week's blog.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image©