The Last Full Measure…
How will you spend Memorial Day this year? I suspect differently than a year ago, when invisible and lethal organisms held us hostages for a longer siege than any of us anticipated or wanted. May 25, 2020 found us worried and afraid; worried about what would become of us, and afraid for our jobs, our children, our aged relatives, even the future of our nation. How long would we have to remain in isolation from each other? How long would we be restricted from doing those things and going to those places that made us feel like we were part of the human community and not prisoners in our own shuttered domiciles? That was then: a year and, seemingly, a lifetime ago.
So what do you intend to do this Memorial Day, given the recent lifting of so many of our yearlong restrictions? Will you host or attend a cookout with friends and family? Will you enjoy a weekend camping trip, drinking in nature’s restorative elixir of open spaces, waterways, hiking trails and mountain vistas? Will you go to a ballgame, played by professionals or by those enjoying a friendly contest among local amateurs? Will you take in a parade or go to a patriotic concert on the green? Or will you carve out a few minutes to visit a cemetery, eyes searching for those gravestones adorned with a military emblem or a small American flag?
We Americans like to recall and cherish the efforts of those who preceded us, those whose heroic and sacrificial deeds paved the way for the freedom and prosperity we now take for granted. We’ll be invited to do it again in a few weeks in honoring our flag (June 14), remembering the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4), and, in late autumn, expressing our thanks to our military veterans, living and dead (November 11). Memorial Day has the added significance of serving as the unofficial beginning of summer, a cue for schools to send off their graduates and a signal to individuals and families to hit the vacation road.
First inspired by the grieving parents and spouses of those who fell in the Civil War, the custom of decorating the graves of loved one’s graves became a solemn spring ritual. I remember my mother calling it Decoration Day as was the custom back then. Today it has become the springtime equivalent to Thanksgiving, both holidays blending the sacred and the secular within our country’s civil religious ethos. Whether on the last Monday of May or the fourth Thursday in November, we find ourselves summoned to meet on the common ground that we, as Americans, share, irrespective of our religious affiliations—or lack thereof. Both of these holy days remind us of the pilgrim feet and patriot dream of those who forged this civilization on which our identities have been stamped.
As a Baby Boomer I owe my life to the men and women whom Tom Brokaw anointed as The Greatest Generation. My parents were among those who endured our deepest and most lasting economic depression only to risk all, and give all in history’s most widespread and devastating war. The America that preceded Pearl Harbor—in values, outlook, political and economic posture and policies—would be largely unrecognizable to those of us who have come to life on this side of Nagasaki. I wonder if any of the greatness of those born between 1901-1927 has, or can rub off on those of us who followed them, whether we are called Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generations Z or Alpha. Or did their commitment, courage, and civic devotion lift them to a pinnacle of citizenship that casts a shadow under which we will, forever, find shelter?
Memorial Day inspires us to think of such things, and to remember who we are and whom we owe in enjoying the benefits of being part of the American saga. We march at the front of a long procession of men and women who weathered storms that have battered every American generation that preceded our own. Each of them lived through economic booms and busts, eras of social harmony and civil disobedience, moments of national pride and episodes of shame that, even today, fester as open wounds on our collective soul. Each generation faced threats that provoked them to do battle against enemies, both near and far. Ninety-three times our citizens answered the call to arms, putting their lives on the line in defense of their families, their neighbors and their country. No generation of Americans was spared, yet every generation found a way to rise up to the challenges of the hour.
*O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
I imagine Tom Brokaw had this stanza in mind as he wrote about the men and women of the generation he viewed as having no equal in our national saga. It makes me wonder how much I owe to those who now keep silent vigil beneath the uniform rows of headstones and crosses that mark their places, this heavenly host of the departed who more than self their county loved.
Memorial Day took on a poignancy for me one sultry afternoon in my youth when I was given the honor of delivering the Gettysburg Address at a community park. I remember how glad I was that Mr. Lincoln had kept it so short. Yet it is hard to conceive of a speech whose content and significance are more profound or eternal than those found in the ten sentences of 271 words crafted by our Sixteenth President. First delivered just over four months after the three bloodiest days in American history—when we nearly destroyed ourselves fighting each other—Lincoln’s voice calls each of us to a higher accounting:
** ….that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”
The last full measure of devotion. How fitting that these words came from the heart of one who, like his very words, “belong to the ages.” They belong to this and every Memorial Day. And they belong to each of us, whether we have served our country in the armed forces or been the beneficiaries of what others have sacrificed on our behalf.
How should any of us measure what we have given our country, given to our fellow citizens in our own times and paid forward to those who will come after us? Can our last full measure be quantified in our hard work and civic duty? Will it be measured in the difference we have made to improving our neighborhoods in the big city or small town communities in which we’ve lived? Could our last full measure be recognized in the time and care we have given to the aged, to the infirm, to those mired in poverty, or to young people for whom we may be their only models of citizenship? Would the last full measure of our devotion be seen in the tacit consent we give to laws we obey when no law enforcers are in view, to the right, or should I say, obligation that we exercise each time we vote as informed participants in our democratic processes.
How should any of us measure ourselves as Americans on this day of memorials, parades, decorations, and summer delights? Perhaps in the only way we can: by taking increased interest in, reverence for and commitment to that cause for which so many gave the last full measure of their devotion.
Today I’m sure many Americans will stand on main street curbs, or park themselves in folding chairs to watch flag toting veterans, neighbors and friends march to the cadence of high school drum lines accompanied by the soaring descants of fire truck sirens. Some will wear uniforms better suited to another time and place. Many will carry rifles over their shoulders, flags holstered to keep Old Glory upright and unfurled. On this Memorial Day 2021, America will once again come to life in connecting us who live in the present with those who made us who we are, as well as with those whose futures we are making every day through each good and lasting measure of our devotion to this, our nation’s continuing experiment in freedom and justice for all.
*From America the Beautiful (1911 revision of Katherine Lee Bates 1893 poem)
**Excerpted from President Lincoln’s dedicatory speech delivered at the Soldier’s National Cemetery on November 19, 1863.
