Patriotism Free Memorial Day Weekend

We spent the Memorial Day weekend honoring the fallen by grilling steaks and working in the garden. We had an interesting encounter between Jasper and a water snake, but nobody was injured. It turns out that there are no fewer than five water snakes on the property, all solemnly meditating on the war dead, of course. I found this out when I went looking for my water hyacinths that washed away in Friday’s storm. Alas, the hyacinths were lost, and someone downstream is going to wonder where they came from later this summer when they grow exponentially.

Mrs Vache Folle spent Thursday and Friday at her mom’s place on the shore. Her mom’s current husband is a disabled WW2 veteran who had a lot of parades and other doings scheduled over the weekend. Being a WW2 veteran iseems to be his full time occupation nowadays. Note to stepfather-in-law: this weekend is about dead people, not survivors. If you didn’t die in the war, you have to wait until November to get recognized. But you can’t do enough to honor WW2 vets. Seriously, it’s never enough. They will parade to the last man.

We don’t participate in any patriotic mumbo jumbo on Memorial Day. We’re sorry all those millions died for the state, and we don’t want to encourage anyone else to die by acting as if those combat deaths were anything other than a colossal waste of lives. They all died senseless deaths, and the standard Memorial Day fare is an attempt to make sense of the senselessness and to encourage folks to sign up as cannon fodder. Also, politicians are always involved in the hope of having some of that glorious combat deadness rub off on them.

Some folks went around this weekend putting little flags on the graves of dead veterans, whether or not they died in a war. Who does this? Do they think they are doing good? My great grandpappy, Paul Landen Winstead, served in WW1, and somebody usually sticks a Memorial Day flag on his grave, even though he died in 1963. For some reason, his WW1 service is featured on his gravestone. His being a husband, father and productive member of the community were all deemed less noteworthy than his brief military adventure in France. Ironically, someone actually sticks US flags on the graves of the Confederate dead in the graveyard in my hometown. They died in battle fighting the very state symbolized by an iteration of that flag, but some flag distributing patriot reckons that they would have wanted to be “honored” with the red, white and blue emblem of their enemy all the same.