Meditation on A Veteran’s Day: Survivor’s Guilt

[HereSince1628]

There are usually flags waving, a few words of memory and patriotism, a prayer, and then the honor guard from the American Legion fires a salute. Across the cemetery a bugle slowly will sing the mournful notes of taps. It's been that way all my life, more than half a century, with little change except that each year a few more markers fill the lawn. A day to honor the sacrifice of those who served, a day to lament and wish for peace. A day. Just one day; well, not even a whole day. More like an hour in places like the largely unvisited national cemetery dissected by six lanes of traffic rushing folks off to their busy day where I will stand later today.

It is not without a sense of guilt I’ve stood in places like that for the past 31 years. So it is among the fraternity of survivors. After the pageantry, after the minor politicians have sallied off in their limousines, after the local tv crews have left, a few of us will stay behind, for just a little while.

Our eyes will sweep the rows of tiny flags on graves of men we never knew, yet somehow know all too well. Their bodies fill a space ours could just as easily have taken.

But for the grace of God, or luck, a warning shout, a push, perhaps just where we were placed in line, they fell. We didn’t. We suspect that in the end they were not fighting for a cause but rather trying to stay alive, because that is exactly what we did. We’re haunted believing there really was no good reason why we should stand on these crisp fall mornings above the fallen leaves while they lie beneath them.

We are those last few stragglers you notice standing silently in the cemeteries on Veteran’s Days. We are reminding ourselves that many of those fallen were braver, better soldiers who buried their fear more ably than we did. We dread we may have let them down. We may wonder, are we worthy of our survival? Were they better men? Would they have done more than we have done with our lives?

Perhaps it is a part of aging, some sort of lost virility that lets the doubts grow each year, and ever more quickly bring tears to our eyes. We know we just had another year of chances. A year not just to live but to warn, to push, to volunteer to take a place in the front of the line. A chance to do important work they never had. Did we deserve this year? We have our doubts. Another year and we have not stopped the dying.