Remembrance (Print)

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December 16, 2025

Remembrance (Print)

Remembrance, or Give Us Back the Day

by Randy Kilgore

Branches creak in surprised protest, and bushes swish and thwack as the odd collection of soldiers move to the outer edges of the cemetery, taking spots some have occupied twice a year for centuries.

The visitors are coming again, and it is for these very few hours of remembrance this collection of frozen-in-time soldiers strain and stretch and jostle for seats just outside the trimmed lawn and flag-studded landscape. Few of them notice the strains of the high school band's tuba. Though they appreciate the music, it is the whomp-whomp-whomp of marching feet they that stirs their souls.

They're all quiet as they strain to hear what has always been every soldier's secret thrill: The cadence of the march that tells everyone around them---including themselves---that the many are now one. There are no cynics here; every eternally-young-soldier seated in the brush this day is evidence someone still remembers who they once were.

The youngest---boys and girls still open to the mysteries of life---do occasionally catch a glimpse of them through the holes in the brush. The soldiers smile and wave, grateful for innocent eyes and vivid imaginations. Almost always, one of the young ones breaks a parents' grip and races to the brush, pointing and waving as a harried parent trails. This oft-repeated episode is the hardest part of their day. Standing there, fettered by the pressures of life and governed by a pace no longer theirs to set, the adult parent stands surrounded by all these silent soldiers---

---and doesn't see a thing.

It is an icy reminder of the gap between the living and the dead---the saddest image of a fading commitment to remember.

The ceremony itself is fun, though; a warm-hearted mix of the best of what they remembered about their lives before they existed only in the memories of others.

"Dumbest idea ever done under God's Creation," sour-faced Gus always chirped about midway through the ceremonies. "

Much as they didn't like agreeing with Gus, every soldier there shared the sentiment of disgust with the politicians who changed Memorial Day from May 31 to the last Monday in May. Surely they had done their memories a great disservice.

"Shoot," Lester weighed in, making the spitting motions he used to make in real life, though tobacco isn't evidently allowed in these reunion images, "ain't no time before nobody'll be here. Only thing's keepin' us around these days is the vets themselves, and you can see how few of them there is."

Harvard-trained Robert sighed at the degraded grammar of his comrades, but even he agreed: "Parents make an effort when their kids have to be here for the band, or Scouts; otherwise there'd mostly be just veterans and politicians. "

"Praise be for the Boys & Girls Scouts, though," Roberto said, "long as they put those flags up, we can keep showing up here."

As the bugle plays its' haunting tune, the poets and romantics in the crowd start spotting the soldiers on the edge, too, though nobody could remember any ever coming over to talk. Still, it was enough for most of them that someone besides the kids could still conjure up their faces.

In this Massachusetts cemetery, where soldiers from every conflict are buried, the scene during the bugler's play is stunning indeed. Revolutionary War soldiers in tri-fold hats stand next to World War I doughboys, surrounded by dozens of soldiers of every era, each at attention, straining to will the bugler to play forever, knowing as they do that these ceremonies are fading from the American landscape. Even now, first the poets and then the children get swept away from the mysterious past and return to the pace-driven present, no longer able to see what they once saw; barely able to remember. No last waves or smiles; just the bustle of strollers creaking as parents raced to beat the marching band out of the cemetery. They were eager to begin the summer most Americans had already started by sleeping through this ceremony.

Still, the powerful memories racing through the hearts and minds of the living veterans lingering over the graves enabled these "ghosts" of soldiers passed (or past) to continue to look on a bit longer.

Over to the right stood the stranger who showed up every year but kept to himself. The soldiers in the brush knew him to be a veteran, but no one else in the town did---a privacy he preferred as he struggled with memories of his own.

Under the flagpole raced a dozen children, frantically searching for shell casings from the guns fired in salute. It always ticked the soldiers off that the shell casings were policed as rigidly as the drill sergeants used to make them police cigarette butts in basic training. Just once they wished the kids could find a souvenir shell casing. "Probably go to officers' kids," Littlejohn grumbled, nudging the officer next to him good-naturedly.

Long after the crowds had gone and the living veterans had shuffled off, the collection of remembered soldiers sat perfectly still, their presence further enabled by the series of private visits by veterans for whom the public ceremonies were just too overwhelming. Sometimes they came with grandkids or adult children, but usually they came by themselves. Walking among the tombstones, they invariably stopped and held long conversations, living to dead. For some, it was the chance to apologize for what they wished they could have done better; or for not being there when their friend passed over; or more often than not, they apologized for surviving when their buddy didn't. Always, always, the soldiers in the brush wept at this sacred ritual of remembrance. Never once, in all the years they'd been returning, did any of them ever eavesdrop on those discussions between the living and the dead. It was enough to see it from a distance; enough to know they were remembered by the friends who knew them last---and who it turned out often knew them best.

"Seventeen," Justin said, at just above a whisper.

"Seventeen!" Leon repeated louder. "That can't be!"

Adoniram, the oldest soldier there, confirmed the count. "Justin may be a rookie, but he can still count. There were indeed only seventeen citizens there today. The rest were firefighters, police officers, band members or their parents. Only seventeen people showed up without a reason."

The branches creaked and the bushes swished and thwacked again; and the edges of the cemetery were suddenly empty. One last sound echoed over the graves, a whop-whop-whop of mallet pounding wood. A photo in the local newspaper, (now available solely online), shows the image of the sign found later by the caretaker:

"Give us back the day! "it read, or at least that's what we're told it said.

It couldn't be read any more: Sometime during the night, someone had slapped a bumper sticker over the sign that read "We Support Our Troops."

Somewhere from the edges of the graveyard, a heavy sigh whooshed across the meadow of stone.