Remembrance Day

I'd like to take a moment out of my normal brand of zaniness to discuss Remembrance Day. I just returned from a Remembrance Day service and I need to type my feelings and thoughts before they go out of my head and I return to my egocentric life routine. Remembrance Day has always been a day that hits me hard, and yet I never think it hits me hard enough.

At the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum the turn out was a few thousand over the the few hundred expected. Laura and I mostly sat surrounded by people twice our age with the familiar hats of a veterans randomly popping out of the crowd. We were stuffed in shoulder to shoulder.

The ceremony started out as they usually do; greetings, welcomes, bringing out the flags or "colours" as I learned they are called.

We stood respectfully for the two minutes of silence. I don't know if it was planned, but the steady buzzing of an aircraft started to build from what must have been just outside. We couldn't see it but we knew it was there. It slowly rose to a crescendo and filled the hollow hanger. It was everywhere; engulfing everybody and reverberating through my brain. The noise wasn't anywhere near deafening, but it consumed you the way a deafening sound would. I closed my eyes and imagined standing in a field while hearing that sound overhead.

The Redeemer University College Concert Choir helped the speaker with a passage of Scripture. He would read a line and they would sing another line, bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball. They started out with just the girls singing in unison. Then the girls split into two part harmony. With each session they added more voices and split into more harmonies until at last the sound was rich and full. It was beautiful. "And I will raise you up on wings of Eagles and hold you in the palm of my hand."

The video presentation hit me like no other. Under a soft voice singing Oh Canada the pictures of soldiers who have died in Afghanistan focused and faded across the screen. It took me a moment to realize that these lively faces captured in photographs that could not have been more than a year old were no longer living on this Earth. There were so many. It's one thing to see old crosses and black and white photos from wars sixty years ago. There is a certain amount of acceptance that comes with remembering. But to see the young faces of present day Canada and to know how recently they died...I can't describe how this hit me. There are no words. The only way to express what I felt was through the involuntary lump in my throat and the tears streaming down my face. I felt silly crying at first. I couldn't see anyone else crying. And then I thought how trivial it was to be worried about how I looked crying. I let my tears spill over without bothering to wipe them away.

We've been fighting so long for peace...isn't there some sort of an oxymoron in that? I start thinking about the nature of war and why we fight. The last few decades have given us a new reason to fight. Not over land, but against terrorism and inhumanity. What saddens me is to think that no matter how hard we fight...no matter how long we fight...we will ALWAYS be fighting against these demons. All we can do is hope to better the world and save the lives of the ones we love. But the issues of war are too big for me to analyze. There is too much and I just feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

During the singing of God Save The Queen (to which Laura and I could not sing along because we have never learned it) the man sitting next to me pointed to a veteran infront of us and informed me that he had flown the Spitfire. I have to admit, I am not very knowledgable with Canadian history. But I knew from the way he said it that it was very prestigious. I told Laura after. I'm not sure if she knew or not either, but she gave the same reaction as I did. "Oh wow."

At the conclusion of the ceremony the speaker asked the veterans to stand up. It was a veteran three rows ahead of me who clutched the hand of his wife as he stood that set off my tears again. How much had they lived through together!

At the retiring of the colours I felt humbled and in awe of those that serve their country. Those that risk their lives to make this world a bit of a better place for you and me to live in. Who of us can declare such selflessness?

Wear a poppy. It's the least you can do.

When you go home
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow
We gave our today

-From a World War II British Army monument on the Kohima Ridge in Burma