How will we remember?
My friend Christiane sent an email to us and invited us to go to Victory Square tomorrow morning for the ceremony and procession. So taking her up on it, I decided to reply back, “yes.” But something was bothering me this year over the week proceeding into Halloween when I mentally reminded myself that soon we would be donning poppies on lapels.
The Monday or Tuesday morning after Halloween I managed to grope around before dawn and securely attached my poppy to my jacket by pinning it back into itself. Shortly after, I was stabbed full in my palm by the poppy as I was running to catch the bus and get my bus pass out. Don’t ask me how that happened, when my purse is no where near where I attached my poppy, but I made a note to myself to readjust that poppy! I only stabbed myself a couple more times slightly less fatally last week before Christiane’s email.
Why mention all the poppy stabbings? Well, simply put, because I am guilty of having put my poppy on that first Monday or Tuesday out of duty, and without really having paused to think about its significance. And I think that the small short and intense stabs were like reminders of the small short and intense underlying issues I hadn’t worked out yet.
And so fianlly, when Christiane’s email arrived, my little “yes” turned into a little longer response as I attempted to face it – why remember? Why go to Victory Square early Thursday morning rather than turning over in my bed, waking up late and spending the day cleaning or doing some other activity until the day is done and then finally mumbling, “oh yeah, remembrance day…”?
So here was my response to the email:
I would love to join you! I actually get that sense each year, but haven’t normally followed up on it beyond turning on the television and watching some news broadcast on it…although, two years ago now I got to be in Ottawa the week of remembrance day.
I used to feel disconnected when I was a kid. I remember I watched an episode of this kids’ detective television show once called “ghost writer”, and during one of the episodes a girl was looking for or trying to help this man who was a war veteran and was searching for a name on the memorial walls for fallen soldiers.
I felt disconnected because as a child of immigrant parents, I didn’t think I knew anyone who died or served in the wars for Canada, that we were remembering. And I guess anyone could feel disconnected if they only looked at it that way.
We read Kit Pearson’s the Sky is Falling and learned about Japanese internment camps in elementary school. We talked about the Holocaust in high school. All the time, just a little bit of me was saying, but that’s their story.
But there’s a rawness that you can’t ignore when you read or watch or hear something like Timothy Findley’s The Wars. And even though each year I can’t really remember how Flanders fields goes, I remember how it feels.
Well, I don’t feel as disconnected anymore because I think that the suffering and the pain that we remember as well as the hope and the battles we respect are right here with us today. Yes, Canadian soldiers fought and died for us in World War I and II. Yes, our World War I and II veterans are getting older. And no disrespect to them, I think I read in the news a while back that our last World War I vet may have passed away. And whenever you read that, attached to it is the question, how will we remember?
Sorry – I’m not trying to go on some long tirade about World War I and II or pull in some commentary on the “more current wars in recent history” or some comment about wars that are going on around us in the world right now. And I’m almost done. But I think that what I’m trying to get at is that all of this is more relevant to us than it seems.
As “safe” as we are in Canada, as “removed” as we are in Canada, a lot of us are facing personal battles and struggles everyday. Bombs may not be coming down around us in our streets – OK, maybe that’s wrong – I think there’s a report in the news about gang violence…But maybe we don’t get to witness tanks coming down our streets. But then we do know someone who has worked on the downtown eastside before and is working there now again (Christiane worked for Atira Women’s Resource Society and now for Union Gospel Mission). And maybe we don’t (or maybe we do) know someone who fought and died in Kandahar or Rwanda or survived the Khmer Rouge. But we may know someone who fought an illness or died from cancer.
I guess what I’m saying is, we’re not all that removed afterall. So yes, Christiane, I am down for some reflecting time with you. Long answer to a simple request. And without sounding patriotic, that’s what I think I’m trying to do now when I think of the tomb of the unknown soldier or if I wear a poppy. That it’s even about remembering unknown, nameless, faceless people who fight because they were there before us, and they’re all around us, and including us now.
So tomorrow morning we are going to Victory Square. And really, I didn’t write this as some attack on what we choose to do with our Remembrance day, I wrote all this to try and answer something I guess I felt I needed to address in myself about disconnect.
Christiane also has a blog, and as a credit to her (because I mentioned her so many times in this post including where she works), I’m also including a link to her website at http://selfsecond.wordpress.com/. It’s a website she started on her way down on a missions trip to St. Lucia and Soufriere, but I believe she intends to keep it going for more philanthropic endeavours in the future, right? 
