A Comforting Message

Memorial Day Weekend is generally considered the beginning of summer vacation time when school is out or soon will be. It's when we kick-off our shoes, go barefooted, wear shorts or shorten our skirts and head for the campgrounds, fishing ponds and beaches. That's the fun part on which to build memories.

There are other memories, too; sad thoughts as we remember those no longer with us, for one reason or anther. So we pull up our boot straps and steel ourselves with the resolve that life must go on ... just as they would want us to "get on with it."

The original memorial observances began when returning soldiers and families decorated gravesites of Civil War casualties. Later it was known as Decoration Day and May 30 became the official date of commemoration. It was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action and known as Memorial Day. Now we honor those casualties on the last Monday in May.

A Parable of Immortality

"I am standing here upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the
morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!’

"Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
  as when she left my side and just as able
to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!’
there are other eyes watching her coming and
other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes!'"