Memorial Day weekend always reminds me of the following piece by the late Poet/Artist Robert Sexton.
Not long ago I walked through the National Cemetery at the Persidio in San Francisco. It was late afternoon, and the mauve and rosey colors of the gathering dusk tinted the headstones on the graves of thousands of young people who rest within that solemn and beautiful place.
All around me were sensations of life: birds chattering in nearby trees; a passenger plane, scratching the sky high overhead; the vivid colors of autumn; and the soft, life-bearing wind that rustled my collar and rolled across the gentle sloping land.
Yet, at my feet, there was only the silence of lives that had ended much too soon.
I paused before one shadowed grave, and, looking down into the rich green grass that was his blanket, I thanked the young man that lay within. His sacrifice had assured my freedom; and, though sometimes I seem to take that for granted, on this day, in this place, I could not. For just behind this young man, there slept another. And behind him, another. And row after row of individual lives spread before me, each unique and born with hope; each now closed and sealed in silence by the tongues and hands of tyranny.
It is the courage and generosity of those who died for freedom that has given me my own. Their legacy is my gift, and I hold it with both gratitude and a sense of responsibility.
Standing among them in that hallowed place, I felt their purpose and resolve. For tyranny still walks upon this earth, and, whether it wears the armor of dictatorial authority or clothes itself in the mantle of self-righteous religious zeal, the quest is the same: the denial of individual liberty.
If I am to honor their bequest and to pass it’s richness to those who follow me, then my life must be both a celebration of individual freedom and a vigilant defense against its enemies. Human history has shown that one cannot live without the other: defense without conscience becomes offense; liberty without caution is a timid prey.
Through the fading light of that afternoon, I lingered as with a company of friends and felt the measure of the faith they had held for every man and me.
