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Dear Ones,
I hope you are enjoying the last evening of this long, Memorial Day weekend.
I will keep this short and sweet but just wanted to post my official ‘thank you’ to those who lost their lives defending our country. PC was so sweet to chauffeur me around El Paso this afternoon so I could take pictures for an upcoming post but we also took a few minutes to drive through the national cemetery at Ft. Bliss.
I was so moved by the number of cars, families, individuals taking time today to visit the cemetery today. Of course, El Paso is a military town. We love our soldiers, we love Ft. Bliss. El Paso sits right on the Texas-Mexico border and has a large (as in large majority) Mexican-American population. As in the Mexican tradition for the October celebration Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), there were whole families at the cemetery with lawn chairs and picnic baskets. And rather than being a somber occasion, they tend to make visiting the cemetery a happy time for remembering the lives of the soldiers they have lost.
I took pictures of the cemetery, the families, the flowers and the flags then uploaded them from my phone to my computer. And somehow deleted them, every single photo, in one fell swoop. I was so bummed. The cemetery is lovely and so El Paso! I wanted to share that with you. But I borrowed the image above from the Department of Veteran Affairs and sadly, that is all I have to offer you. Instead of having grass at the cemetery, the Ft. Bliss National Cemetery has caliche, a kind of clay-sand-rock combination because we are in a desert, and work to save our precious water. Each headstone was decorated with a U.S. flag. When they were young, I took the girls to help put out the flags early in the morning before Memorial Day. It was moving experience because we came face to face with the names of many soldiers and the military conflict(s) each was connected with.
Because I struggle to keep Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day straight in my head, I did a little research today on the origin of this holiday. I was really surprised by what I read.
In an article entitled “Who Invented Memorial Day?” by Jim Downs for Time.com, I discovered that freed slaves can be credited with the first, if informal, Memorial Day-type remembrance. Downs reports, “On May 1, 1865, freed slaves gathered in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the death of Union soldiers and the end of the American Civil War.” [source] Amazing!
According to the article “Memorial Day History” by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “Local springtime tributes to the Civil War dead…[were]…held in various places. One of the first occurred in Columbus, Miss., April 25, 1866, when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves, as well.” [source] The Battle of Shiloh took place in Tennessee, so this fact was near and dear to my heart.
General John Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, declared that May 30, 1868 be observed as Decoration Day, the first Memorial Day. Logan suggested the day be set aside “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.” [source]
Knowing all of that, I hope I will better be able to remember that Memorial Day is for remembering the soldiers who lost their lives in military conflicts to protect us, to keep us free and safe. To keep us America. And Veteran’s Day is the holiday we recognize all of those who have served in the military.
Hope you enjoyed a beautiful Memorial Day weekend!
Hugs and kisses,
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