Author: Paurian

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Two photos and something learned

Last week I had the honor to join with my company headquarters in D.C. for business and pleasure. They usually give me one free day to wander around the Nation’s Capitol. During this trip, I ventured into the Arlington National Cemetery.

I had expected a few things about the cemetery, all which were disproved while there. First, it’s not just soldiers that are buried there. Wives, infants and civilians are there, too. Some famous but there are plenty obscure and unknown. Second, as you move closer to the present there are fewer tombstones marked “unknown”.

I had expected there to be no “unknown” tombstones and just one “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” monument. Instead I found many tombstones marked “unknown soldier” – a whole field of them – and two tombs of unknown soldiers. One is the more famous with paths marked to get there. It’s huge with a single, large, uncomfortable marble chair on a stage facing rows of marble pews below. The other is a tomb marking the remains of 2111 unknown Civil War soldiers.

There are no unknown tombs in the Viet Nam plots and only a few in the Korean or World War II plots. World War I has more and Civil War has an entire field of unknown soldiers that were given little more than a number to their name. I suppose there was an absence of dog-tags then. But thought it was worth asking into. The woman at the center desk in the visitors center shed some light into this.

She said that at one time there were a few unknown soldiers in the Viet Nam plots, but that they had since been identified through DNA tests. All soldiers that die this point forward will not be unknown because of that biological technology. If I heard correctly, there are rare cases where bodies are exhumed for this purpose, which is how the last unknowns in the Viet Nam plot were identified.

It’s macabre, but comforting that we are able to identify the dead, but really – what is our identity? It’s certainly more than a chisel mark on a tombstone or a series of amino acids along a protein chain. Our souls are here on earth for a purpose, and like a green leaf on a tree or a single line of code, we’re here to play a small part in something much bigger than any one of us. And though we get lost in the billions of others that have come before us, live around us, and will come after us we are each significant… even if we’re “unknown”.

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Stepping Into Autumn

Nothing brings a skip to my heart with the anticipation of fun and excitement like Autumn. As God’s carefully orchestrated song of color, odor and sounds fill the cool fall breeze, the hot angry days of summer come to a close and the cold bitter days of winter are still distant enough to forget them. The senses fall upon me as the wind that carries them flits in my hair; it causes me to remember my youth – any good of it – and the regrets of not taking more advantage of the good when I had it.

My parents, for example, made so many sacrifices for me but I didn’t learn as a child to appreciate them. How do you teach a child to appreciate? They don’t know the effort involved. Sometimes parents don’t either.

My children are all so unique. Sometimes I have to seek out what they appreciate. For example, running across a series of straw bales doesn’t look exciting to me, but to one of my daughters it’s a thrill! Her face lights up as she realizes that her Daddy endorses a little frolicking on the large golden bricks.

As Summer turns to Autumn, and leaves change in the cooling breeze I’m reminded of the importance of change. It reminds us of that which is constant. How when we fall apart, our loving God and caring parents are there to piece us back together.

And while nothing gold can stay, perhaps these golden memories I have with my children now will stick around long enough for them to have their own families and share their fond memories of them to their children.

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Dismal

Sometimes I need a kick in the head … or at least in the pants. With middle age comes a more present awareness of our mortality.

Washington Irving was 36 years old when he published “The Sketch-Book”, including tales of old age (Rip Van Winkle) and death (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow). Although these were satire in nature, they were clearly aimed at the darker forces that envelop men even today. In these two stories he addresses pride and antisemitism under the guise of patriotism and covetous greed that’s fed under an heir of intellect and stature.

The first is an obvious snobbery that taunts and threatens every outcast to the point that outcasts wouldn’t exist without it. The second is more subtle and makes for a great study on literature. Even the smartest and most learned individual can fall into ignorance by the simplest and stupidest lack of moral character.

When these works were published they were touted by England as the first true sense of unique American literature in history. This is 30 years after the United States Constitution had been fully ratified and the government operations described therein realized. Our nation was still in its infancy.

Other works of literature that emphasized the dismal state of our mortality both physically and spiritually seem to have been developed at or past mid-life. Edgar Allen Poe wrote the Raven when he was 36, just four short years before his untimely demise. Dracula was written when Bram Stoker was 50. At 34 and 36, respectively, Stevenson wrote the Body-Snatcher and the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The only strong literary works that I could find of similar gruesome content written by authors at younger ages involved the Year without a Summer. On July 1816, the inception of Frankenstein and The Vampyre occurred on a creative dare instigated by Lord Byron after reading Phantasmagoria. Mary Shelley was 19 and John Polidori was 21.

No man can know when his time is up. Luke 12:20 paints a dim picture of a rich man who swells with pride at his accomplishments, destined to die that night.

So in our mortal state, what do we do? Gravestones rot and break away. People are only remembered two or three generations at best, then forgotten. Each marker tells a story, but each story – like the fires that smoldered the great Alexandrian Library – are lost and unrecognizable.

My dad considered the brevity of life and suggested that our brief time on Earth is meaningless without good relationships. It won’t be an intelligent and powerful person who finds worth in your ability who will hire you when you lose a job, it will be the friend who see a friend in need. Getting along well with others is essential to life, and living life in isolation brings a cold demise … there will be enough isolation as we’re buried alone.