Remembrance

I was a child before and during the second world war. On November 11th at eleven o'clock we stood beside our desks in silence and contemplated the meaning of war. There were few families in Scotland who had not suffered loss. My mother's twenty-two year old brother had been killed at Dardanelles in Turkey. There was bitterness and grief still in my grandmother's house.

There was no talk of courage or glory or ultimate sacrifice just a realistic grasp of cruel and senseless slaughter and cold indifference to suffering.

When I grew older, after the Second War, my reading in large part was about various aspects of the recent war. It was long enough after the conflagration for propaganda to have been terminated. We had an accurate account of my own brother's death at twenty-one years of age. We knew the full horror and terror of his experience.

There is no dispute the Second War had to be fought. History however is not kind to the politicians in charge at the time of The Armistice and the years between. They made the Second War inevitable. My grandmother lived long enough to grieve again for a beloved grandson and to contemplate the horrifying details of his death.

When I attend a Remembrance Day Service, my thoughts are of senseless waste and the same thing happening over and over and politicians still yammering on about courage and valour and sacrifice, while they sit in a comfortable pew completely unaffected by the horror and sorrow they create by decisions they make

I did not attend Remembrance Day Service this year. I had two reasons. My remaining brother died at this time last year. I received the phone call on my way out to the Remembrance Day service. He was in hospital having survided a life-threatening episode but was not out of the woods yet. I spent most of the next seven days with him and all of the last three. I was glad to have been there, He needed me.

I remember the day he was born, when he took his first wobbly steps, when he started school and put his small hand in mine and held on tightly. When he came to Canada at twenty-one my house was his home. I know time heals. I know sorrow must simply be endured. I do not go where it is likely to be beyond endurance. Remembrance Day will forever be one of those places.

I had a second reason for not going. I thought I might be the only one who resents the new ceremony of the occasion. An endless succession of wreaths are laid by various commercial enterprises, a basket is opened to release a flock of pigeons, and a flock of politicians are prominent near the Altar of Sacrifice to open the basket.

This year I heard of two other people who have had the same reaction. The first a woman of my own years, turned down an offer by a younger relative to take her to the ceremony. She didn't want to go because it has become just another opportunity for politicians to show themselves off.

The second, a much younger woman, went to the Service and commented afterwards on the numbers of wreaths laid by various commercial enterprises. She feels the ceremony has been commercialized. It’s hard to criticise, when you know something is being done with the best of intentions. Still if it is not said, it will not be heard. Even if it is, things may not change. But it must be said, for there even to be a chance for change.

It is almost ninety years since the appropriate form of commemoration was decided. For two minutes at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all activity is to stop, silence to reign, people to bow their heads and contemplate the hundreds of thousands of young lives lost, brothers, husbands fathers and sons. We inherited grief that never ends, that spills down through the generations

For two minutes, we silently contemplate the unspeakable horror that is war and realize, incredibly, for all the annual resolve, the fine words and sentiments, the bombast of Glory and Valour. War continues. In foreign places, in a society that bears no resemblance to our own, our children are still dying, their perfect bodies blown to smithereens by weapons manufactured by private industry in capitalist countries like ours.