Memorandum for the Record

Committed to Memory

There are just some moments – usually intensely private, I find – that nevertheless need to be committed to the record. Such moments, for me, illustrate the person I’ve become and am still becoming, and I want to write them down and share them here:

My father, hereinafter spoken of in the Third Person – “The Colonel” – was career Army. He entered the enlisted ranks as a buck private prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and rose steadily through the ranks during World War II. Orphaned at an early age, he and his twin brother Stan kicked around Kansas, going from one relative’s home to another. Frankly, Stan found an easier time finding a home with relatives, being the more easy-going and (some would say) tractable of the two. My dad, eventually, was sent to military school.

It was there he found his true home.

Dad was always more comfortable in uniform than he was sitting at home with his own family. “I get up in the morning and take off running, glad to be alive,” he told me, “because I’m going to work.”

Thus, when he died suddenly before his birthday, it was only natural he’d be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Let me paint a picture for you.

Riding in the military-supplied limo, the funeral cortege stretched out behind us. Soldiers of the Old Guard marched in full panoply, while an Army band played the funeral dirge. Dad’s casket was carried on an artillery caisson, covered by the US flag he’d served for so many years.

At the graveside, Mom, my sisters and I sat while the ages old pageant unfolded about us.

But I was also in uniform you see – full dress Navy crackerjack whites. As everyone else sat in numbed silence, I had to stand at attention in full view of everyone else … the only Navy uniform in that Army crowd.

Thus, when the firing party shot three volleys of 7 rounds each, followed by the mournful notes of taps from a pair of buglers stationed up the hill, I damned near bit the inside of my cheek out of my mouth to keep from breaking down in tears. The pain of a gnawed cheek gave me something else to concentrate upon besides the sense of grief and loss that comes when a parent dies suddenly.

Not that I’m against tears, mind you, but the military is a club that both Dad and I willingly joined … and kept rejoining when our hitches were up. We knew the rules of that club, including the strictures against public displays of grief and accepted them as simple facts of life (and death.)

As the last, long, low notes of taps died away, echoing into the distance, I sighed inwardly through the numbness. I had done it. I had gotten through it without breaking down.

As the crowd began to melt away, I felt Dad looking over my shoulder nodding approvingly.

He understood.