REALTOR RUMINATIONS

 Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service.  Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.  As a reminder of and in honor of those who gave up all of their tomorrows so that we can enjoy today:

“ … Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.  It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.  While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.… Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march—honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.But grief is not the end of all.  I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean.  I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column.  Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death—of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring.  As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will. “

From an address delivered on Memorial Day 1884 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.