Nov. 11, 2005 - 17:06 MST

A VERY QUIET DAY

A very small item on the editorial page of the Rocky Mountain News this morning served as a reminder to me that what was once thought to be true - - - wasn't. Among other things, it points up the need for faith in our fellow countrymen who are bearing arms for our country -- regardless of the misguided, greedy intentions of the Bush Bunch. In full:

A DAY TO PLACE VETERANS AT THE FOREFRONT

"When Price Charles and his duchess, Camilla, came to call at the White House last week, their aides all sported artificial red poppies on their lapels, a longstanding way of recognizing Nov. 11, what the British and the Commonwealth countries call Remembrance Day and we call Veteran's Day."

"If 1918 has any topical relevance, it is because it was the year of the Spanish Flu, a lethal pandemic we fear may be repeated. But on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, four years of carnage on Europe's battlefields abruptly came to a halt. Amont the first plants to reappear on those wastelands was the poppy, inspiring a Canadian officer, Lt. Col. John McCrae, to write a poem that began:

"In Flanders field the poppies grow"

"Between the crosses row on row."

"Thus began the tradition of handing out poppies to raise money for needy veterans and the families of the dead. In the years after World War II, poppy fund-raisers were ubiquitious. While the custom is honored elsewhere, it is sadly on the wane in the United States even though it was an American, Moina MIchael, a YMCA worker and teacher at the University of Georgia, who started it."

"Maybe the poppy is as quaint as the giddy optimism of those back in 1918 who believed they had seen the war to end all wars."

"They were wrong, and that's why it is vital, as McCrae said in the mounful In Flanders Field, that we do not break faith with those who fought then and those who are fighting now."

"Today we honor them both."

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Our son Rob was a Navy Vet, never served overseas, but nevertheless was a vet. We lost him to cancer May 31, 2004 on Memorial Day. He was interred at Fort Logan where the crosses bloom, row on row. Gently rolling territory with ponds and small lakes, beautiful trees and shrubbery, a place where peace has finally descended on those veterans who have moved on.

Like the rest of our deceased family, on Memorial Day graves are visited, and on birthdays they are also visited, we visited Rob's grave on his birthday and Veteran's day last year and and on all three occasions this year.

The sun finally came out from behind the gray, the weather warmed a bit, we ran errands in various places before heading south to Fort Logan and Rob's Grave.

I was amazed at just how many new graves are in that area than there were last year.

The news article brought to my mind that I have not seen anyone selling those poppies around our area for several years. It is a shame, so many service families are in need, so many veterans hanging on to life and soul in grim hospitals around the country and they do need more help than our government is giving them.

For us, in our own way, we feel that it should be, parents forge on ahead into the great unknown before their children go on. But it was not to be with Rob.

We brought flowers and Heather arranged them in one of those little conical vases that are supplied, the ones that have the little stem that can be shoved into the sod. Then we sat on the grass quietly for quite a while and finally nodded to each other, got up, went to the car and headed home. Little was said on the way home, each of us more or less meditating on missing Rob I guess.

All in all it was A VERY QUIET DAY . . . . . . . . . . .

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