A soldier's funeral

I got two e-mails from two different people called "A soldier's funeral" In the story an aunt (I find it curious that it wasn't the soldier's mother) described the funeral of her nephew, a soldier who was killed in Iraq. She talked about how all the way to the grave site, the street was lined with people carrying American flags. She talked about how amazing it all was.

We all want to know that we mattered here. And everyone but the soldier realized that, through this act. There is a powerful force that runs though us that desperately desires meaning. The whole town showed up to embody that spirit. I am so impressed with the heroism of our soldiers fighting around the world and representing our country.

The sad reality is that shortly after the funeral, the process of forgetting starts, and so it should. Life does go on. Ask anyone who has lost a loved one. There are a few who will carry the ache of loss with them to the end of their life, but the world resumes its pace, and soon it is just a name on a gravestone and maybe a picture at the local high school. Go to a local graveyard, pick a headstone and attempt to imagine the vibrant person who was once there.

Death is death, and it is inevitable. But I do think that we get caught up in the nobility of it, that we stop seeing it for what it is. It is the end of a life, an end of a path of hopes and dreams. Past that portal is a mystery and we may come to understand that we are more alive there than we were here. But here and now, it is the termination of something precious.

It is a powerful story. Does it entice the young to seek valor and glory on the battlefield? I don't know. And I don't know why the e-mail makes me feel uneasy. It just does.