This time, every year, I am once more 17, a pallbearer at the military funeral of my childhood friend, Lee Olemacher.
Lee, a year ahead of me at Cheney High School, was drafted. The Vietnam War was supposed to be "winding down." The "Vietnamization" of the war, the White House called it. Our boys soon to come home while their boys shouldered the responsibility of defense.
Sound familiar? Maybe we should call it "Afghanistanization," which may work better than the "Iraqization" of our wars, which has left a violent, sectarian, divided mess.
But nonetheless, that autumn day in 1972 we laid Lee to rest in a flag-draped coffin, Taps were played, the honor guard fired the empty, somber salute. A folded flag was given to a mother grieving for her only child.
Lee was a rare innocent, who took simple pleasure in a smile, a rough pat on the back, teaching kids to play baseball as a Little League coach.
Forty year ago, now. Had he lived what could he have accomplished? How many lives touched, enriched? I am almost 60, a graying, aging man with memories, good and bad, sweet and bitter. Lee is forever young, we'll never know what he may have become.
Since Lee, tens of thousands more American men and women have died in service to their country. A new generation of maimed and wounded -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- come back to our shores.
Forty years, and still we war, still we hate, still we thing violence would serve the good, or we are forced into violence to meet violence . . . and the cycle goes on.
What version of God or gods, ideology, political system or economic advantage is worth the blood we have shed, or been forced to exact in return from those who shed blood?
When will be beat our swords into plowshares and learn war no more?
Happy Memorial Day? Rather, I wish for us a Contemplative Memorial Day, and the commitment to work for peace, love and the dignity of our brothers and sisters one life, one family, one community, one city, one state, one nation, one planet at a time.
God bless, and empower us all to dream of, and help make better times.
