Toronto Star (June 4, 2022)
I visited the folks in Massachusetts for Memorial Day weekend. That’s the start of summer in the U.S. and the start of flag-waving season. Cities and towns host parades and a ceremony in court square; there is a stop at the cemetery where a bugler blows “Taps” and local members of the Armed Forces pop a 21-gun salute to veterans fallen and forgotten. (But don’t ever say they’re forgotten.)
The season continues Tuesday, June 14, Flag Day, through July 4, Independence Day. (There’s not a holiday in the U.S. that hasn’t got flag written all over it, even the religious ones.)
This particular Memorial Day was problematic. I’m sure there were Americans who felt the same way, but I didn’t hear them commenting on TV or read them in the thinner-than-my-dad’s-hair local newspaper. Meanwhile, nine out of 10 U.S. flags were flying at half-staff to memorialize the 19 children and two teachers killed in Uvalde, Texas.
On one hand, the flags were lowered; on the other, flags lined the streets. It felt like the right hand didn’t, or couldn’t, see what the left hand was doing, let alone work with it to wash away their sins.
This particular Memorial Day weekend was difficult personally as well. Mother has a form of dementia. She spaces out, forgets things, repeats stories, hasn’t driven in years. These days she’s left the cooking to either the local Council of Aging or my father, whose repertoire, once limited to fried eggs and buttered toast, has expanded to slow cooker stews. He cleans the house too. Even at 85 he has a reputation for being the welder with the steadiest bead in Hampden and Hampshire counties, so he still works.
My mother, meanwhile, does puzzles and knits. Stares out the window at the driveway, which she calls a street, that winds down through a grove of oak, spruce, poplar and birch. Mostly, she sings. Hymns from when she was in the church choir, Christmas tunes, and when Dad is close by, “You Are My Sunshine.” Des chansons québécoise de son enfance.
On Sunday, instead of going to church, my parents watched “The Chalice of Salvation” on local TV. It being Memorial Day weekend, the opening and closing songs were patriotic. My mother couldn’t have told you why they had sung them that specific day. But later, she said, “Hey, Raymond, you know what we sang today?” and launched into “God Bless America.”
I asked her to please stop singing. She continued. I asked her again, a little more forcefully. “Stop singing these damn songs.” Only I didn’t use “damn.”
I shouted at my mother for doing the only thing she enjoys these days.
This is where we’ve come to in the U.S.: Frustrated, enraged people lashing out from an inability to control the uncontrollable. Church and state drink from the same poisoned chalice. We slaughter the innocents in classrooms or, if they make it to 18, send them to their slaughter in Somalia, Afghanistan or Iraq. Those half-staff flags will be hoisted soon enough, then come back down again. It’s not only my mother who is forgetful.