As the wife of an active duty service member, I encounter at least one rendition of the same conversation every Memorial Day: some goodhearted person with the best of intentions thanks me and my family for my husband’s service to our country.
To which I respond, as politely as possible, that while I certainly appreciate their thanks, Memorial Day isn’t about us. It’s about those who gave far more than we have been asked to, and who are no longer here to thank for their ultimate sacrifice.
Which is probably a conversation someone should have had with the fine folks over at Andrew Chapel United Methodist Church in Vienna, Virginia, which falls within sneezing distance of Arlington National Cemetery.
According to this, the church chose to honor COVID victims and Ukrainians killed in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war alongside fallen American military heroes during their Memorial Day concert on Sunday. Which went over about like the lead balloon you’d expect.
"This Memorial Day Weekend event will give people the opportunity to honor, mourn and recognize those who have lost their lives in military service, to the COVID pandemic and the recent war in Ukraine. The concert will feature Barber’s Adagio, followed by honors appropriate for a military funeral, with John Rutter’s Requiem as the centerpiece of this event. Concert attendees will also enjoy ‘The Mansions of the Lord’ as featured in the film ‘We Were Soldiers’ along with other choral works.” the event's description read, per Fox News.
Now, no disrespect to the memories of those who died from our planetary bout with the China-based coronavirus - in fact, perhaps we could add a federal holiday for all the elderly people shoved into nursing homes to die alone so the likes of Andrew Cuomo could rant against Donald Trump.
And as for those who’ve perished in Ukraine - last time I checked? Still not our war.
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Oh, but the church’s impressive foot-in-mouth gymnastic feat didn’t stop there. Following his remarks commemorating fallen service members, Rev. Matthew Sergent added, "During this special program today, we also remember those who have died from COVID and the effects it has had on all of us. And we pray for and recognize today the people of Ukraine who are fighting for their freedom all the lives that have been lost over this senseless war.”
Fox News adds the church’s choir director, Bob Legett, claimed during the beginning of the event that his requiem for coronavirus victims was glommed onto this year’s Memorial Day service because an event planned to honor COVID dead last year had to be canceled.
Counting the U.S. Civil War, an estimated 1.26 million to 1.4 million American service members have died since the onset of the American Revolution. Mostly young men, they found themselves on smoke-filled battlefields, in mosquito-infested jungles or dust-choked deserts, atop raging seas and on bloody beaches, in dank bunkers, and countless other hellscapes a world away from their own homes and loved ones, facing horrors that most of us couldn’t imagine in our worst nightmares, all in voluntary service to a nation that believes freedom is worth fighting to keep and worth dying to preserve.
They gave their entire lives - horribly, bravely, and willingly. It seems the least we can do to give them just one day.
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