Remembrance
As my son Aaron and I stand together watching the intensely precise, practiced movements in red, white and blue, the flash of gold braid, the muffled slap of white gloves against a rifle stock, the measured steps, and the loud crack of metal plates on mirror polished shoes, I’m reminded that traveling here with my father to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier overlooking the Nation’s Capitol somehow always felt like a religious pilgrimage. Having, after many years, finally finished reading The Illiad, a book that my father would often quote, I think now that it was more a Homeric experience. Perhaps they are the same.
Arlington National Cemetery is above all else, a place of Truth, a place of Honor and Glory; “Kleos” in the Greek. This is a place that makes us face an uneasy truth; that it is easier to honor the dead than the living. Achilles famously knew the choice that he faced; “Kleos”- die in battle and be remembered forever as the greatest warrior the world has known, or “Nostos” - return safely home. This is a place where those two irreconcilable choices meet. This is a place for stories to be told. It is still an overwhelmingly emotional place to remember, bear witness to, and retell the stories of my father.
