dual personalities

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of end of World War I. I’ve blogged about our family’s participation on more than one occasion. Over the last four years, the war has received a lot of attention and inspired some wonderful memorials, exhibitions, and history projects.

American cemetery Meuse-Argonne

One of the best WWI archival projects I’ve come across is the web site Epitaphs of the Great War that collects the headstone inscriptions of the war dead. Not only have the compilers researched the deceased, but they have tracked down the literary and religious sources for the memorials. For example, the headstone on Private Edwin Frederick Jones’s grave reads, “May no wanton hand ever disturb his remains,” which turns out to be last line of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie and the epitaph inscribed on the hero Natty Bumppo’s grave.

Families were often creative with epitaphs, although many stuck to tried and true phrases like “Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away” or something from Shakespeare: “Fear no more the heat of the sun, nor the furious winter’s rages.” One family even used “che sera sera”!  Do visit the site and spend some time reading about the young men who lost their lives all those years ago. Unfortunately, many graves have no names; those men are “known unto God”.

I can’t help feeling that the fanfare and research of the last four years are meant to end our remembering — as if to say we can stop thinking about WWI now because it happened a hundred years ago. Yet major wars have a way of holding on, even when we want to forget. Just think of how the Civil War continues to haunt us. As for WWI, laborers in Belgium and France will continue to discover bodies at a rate of more than forty a year whether or not we choose to remember. The dead will have their day.

Don’t forget to wear a poppy and take a moment to be silent tomorrow at 11 am, on the 11th day of the 11th month.

P.S. In other news son #2 god a job! He will be the new arts and entertainment editor of the newspaper, the Idaho Mountain Express! Meanwhile, across the country in northern NY his parents will spend the weekend frantically emptying their kitchen because the big kitchen redo starts on Monday. Stay tuned for updates!

*Byron, Don Juan, and also the epitaph on Private Alan Yardley’s grave.

Another busy week has flown by, but there’s good news. The travelers have arrived safely in Idaho, tired but happy. To think that barely a week ago we said our tearful goodbyes (and yes, there was a little snow on the ground)!

So much can happen in a week. Son #1 shaved off his beard and with it at least five years and all his street cred (yay!).

Meanwhile, son #3’s car got the death sentence (transmission failure) and he had to rush his wonderful cat Eve to the all-night animal clinic in Indianapolis after she ate some lead solder. I guess she had a kitty stomach pump. It all worked out and she is fine.

It’s alarming how fast things can change. We always seem to be rushing around, too busy to notice our surroundings or appreciate the wonderful people in our lives. Tomorrow is my DH’s birthday, but I’m afraid the celebration will be somewhat curtailed this year — or maybe just different. There’s a gratitude potluck lunch after church tomorrow and then a Guy Fawkes bonfire party at a colleague’s farm tomorrow night. I wonder whom we will burn in effigy?

The one present (aside from a family gathering) that I know my DH would like I can’t give him; that is free time — time to read, time to sit and think, time to do nothing at all. I guess we’d all like more of that. Edgar Allan Poe got it right when he wrote,

I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Hear, hear! Let’s all get off the gerbil wheel and pursue happiness and wisdom slowly and quietly. That might have an appreciable effect upon humanity, mightn’t it? I, for one, want to let the wrinkles come with mirth and laughter and some peace and quiet, too.

As we head into November, do try to slow down and appreciate the little things in life — they’re what make it all worthwhile.

*Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice