Sorry, but in my list of holidays, it is not a happy one any more.

A couple things occurred to me as I was thinking about what to write about.

First was a guy on a discussion list who wrote the whole wish and wished everyone a happy Memorial Day.

Maybe he meant no harm, but in a sense I was offended.  He is wishing happy celebration of a day to memorialize the death of patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Sure they deserve acclaim, memorializing and respect.  But I dunno, I am not happy about it at all.  For every death given for our freedom there is a bereaving family. the loss of loved ones and often children now living without a parent.  "Happy Memorial Day" to my curmudgeonly mind seems too flippant.

I celebrate with grim sobriety the lives lost, the stories never told of valor and bravery and the heroes forgotten.

But my second thought reminds me how shallow that is.  Shopping tonight I saw flags and banners and cakes and stuff.  I even hung a new crisp flag out front.

But shopping I also saw people who don't give a rat's ass about any of that, to them it is a day off work, or a day of no school.  A day to BBQ.

Again, it is my curmudgeonly mind at work, but for all the supposed dissatisfaction with the war, people really don't care.  They say bring the troops home, but frankly we don't really feel any pain for their sacrifice, except maybe our complaints about gas prices, which is not really related, but as the nutroots love to cry "No War for Oil" it is related.

When did I last sit and think about how one of those brave men died in Iraq?  Only in passing really.  I don't dwell on it here outside of my blog.

The war is not real to me, except when two friends were deployed.  But even then, it is was not real to me, it was just something I knew intellectually.

Most of us would say the same. 

And in the realm of politics the war is only real and important because of the political ramifications of supporting it or opposing it.

Hillary and Obama vote against funding the troops to make a political statement.  John Edwards…damn I wish I could give him a real piece of my mind.  He wants you to protest the war to help celebrate Memorial Day. 

I don't get that. 

No, of all the many holidays we celebrate, this one fills me with the most conflict and really exposes a lot of the worst in our society.

But it also brings out the best.  My friend and his son spent the day putting flags on graves, much like they do at Mt Tahoma every year locally.  The strange part is he is not a supporter of the war at all, but he understands respect.

There is a lesson there.  Yes you can support the troops and oppose the war, but you have to walk a very fine line of how you express that support and how you address that opposition.

There will be parades, and the laying of wreaths.  There will be celebrations that really have no other focus then the people who died.

And they will be sincere, and heartfelt.  They will include people who lost loved ones in battle who cling to each other for comfort as they struggle to reconcile pride and loss.

And there will be protests, people who only see hatred of war who see this as their totem.  They don't see the protests as disrespectful, they claim they are (Like Edwards) only trying to prevent any more death.

But they are wrong. They refuse to see that those actions send the wrong messages.  They weaken the will of some of the people they claim to want to protect and they embolden their enemy.

I don't have much else to say really.  I am not sure why this year the weight of death is weighing on me so much.  I have been called a warmonger by emailers, but that is untrue.  I despise war.  I hate the conflict and I abhor the horrors and the death.

But I recognize that need and necessity do not give a damn about my feelings.  I remember that all through the centuries our countries has take the harder road of fighting when the need demanded it. 

My support for the war is based on my belief in the cause we fight for, and in my belief that the enemy we have to fight against must be stopped.  But I hate it, and every drop of life spilled is one too many.

So in parting, I wish you a sober, reflective and introspective Memorial Day.   I cannot bring myself to wish you a happy one.

Somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan there is a soldier who is about to die.  I don't know his name.  I don't know his life story, or anything about his family or hometown.  I don't know his values, or his beliefs.  I don't even know if he believes in the war he is fighting in, that is soon to claim his life.

I do know that whoever he is, as his family mourns their loss, there are others who either do not care, or who want to use his death as a way to score points politically.  To them he is a number.  Not a man, not a life, a pawn.

Today is the day we celebrate his death, and the deaths of those killed before him.

Today is Memorial Day.