Letters to the Dead

May 31

I knew Memorial Day was coming when I saw this lamppost decorated with red, white and blue flowers and the handwritten note that a mother had penned to her son dead in the mideast. This was on the Boston Common Wednesday. Today on the Common there will be a major event to commemorate those who have fallen in those wars and, it sometimes seen, been largely forgotten. Today's Globe cites a finding of the Pew Center on People and the Press which reveals that from May 13th to May 16^th just 1% of news coverage was devoted to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.I took this picture with my phone which is why it's not very good. Also, there were two old guys on the bench right next to it and I didn't want to disturb them by trying to get closer. Still, I wasn’t so far away that I missed the pathos of the way the ink was starting to run and blur in the elements. "My dear son," the letter begins.The closet cemetery to us here has so many flowers always. Italian families take wonderful care of their graves. My family is Irish and our memorial stands as bare as it has stood since 1910 when it was purchased for the girl I never knew as my grandmother and the baby she died with. David’s mum is from old Yankee stock and when her young husband was taken with cancer she bought a simple stone and pretty much left it alone too - until forty years passed and we brought her there to lie once more beside him.I understand Puerto Rican folks visit their family members’ graves all the time and feast there and talk and try to include the strengthless dead in all the fun. It seems like a wonderful thing to me.I can feel the workweek looming now but I did just finish my column, and this is my posting, done now too. Maybe Dave and I can get ourselves to the graves of our own dear ones today and walk around them some and TRY in our human futile way to make them live again.