In Memoriam

I spent the last two days standing over General George S. Patton's grave. Originally, he was buried like everyone else, among the soldiers, undistinguished from all the other crosses and stars. It was a Luxembourger who was walking among the graves one day and stumbled upon his.

She thought it was wrong that he wasn't given a more, let's say, "elevated" position in the cemetery. I suppose the government agreed, and so his body was moved to a large memorial just in front of plot B, the first one you're confronted with upon walking into the graveyard. It's chained off and on top of it is a quote from General, and later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower: "All who shall hereafter live in freedom will be here reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and with the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live eternally."

But I like the idea of him resting among his men better. After all, a soldier is a soldier and they're all in it together. I find it ironic that he didn't die the way I think he would've liked, and also, just a day before he was meant to go home to America. A truck took him out on a leisure trip, shooting pheasants and not men.

Surprisingly, this memorial service moved me to tears. I guess it's because I was standing on liberated ground, something Americans don't get to do if we don't leave our little bubble of the New World.

The Battle of the Bulge was fought here in Luxembourg and there are 5,000 American graves to show for it, veterans to remember it, millions of grateful Europeans who lived through it, and millions more who were born afterwards who somehow take their freedom much less for granted than the kin of those who allowed that freedom to be.

Thinking about it, I know why I was so moved. It's because we do take it for granted despite our rhetoric. 'Freedom' has become a word so overused in the American lexicon that we have become desensitized to its true meaning. In doing so we have lost sight of creating a reality of that freedom.

Sadly, I feel, we are letting freedom slip away under the false pretense of itself. It is a victim of our apathy and our unparalleled ability to pretend our world is such a wonderful world when, indeed, it is anything but.

We must wake up as a nation because the world does not love us.

We're juveniles. We're young, not even 231 years old. In the face of nations, we're infants, and the maturity expected of us is unwonted. We're still in the blissful fantasy of childhood, missing the forest for the trees. But the world, as always, comes upon us quickly. I fear we have ignored reality for too long. Perhaps, we will learn from our mistakes. Judging by our arrogance and egocentricity, I fear we won't.

That graveyard is one not only of soldiers but of a dying American Dream. The dream may be revived if we realize we are not separate from the world but a part of it and that the oceans on either side of us are not as wide as they used to be.

I love that Dream and dream it, too. I want to see it realized again and again and again. I want to run my fingers over the embroidered stars of our flag and I want that flag to stand for a country I love in all ways, in both idea and in reality.

I want people to understand that support of soldiers need not be support of a war, and that love of country need not be love of its current state.

I stood in the sun amongst the graves too long but it was worth it. For the honor of those fallen soldiers, of ones not fallen, and of ones to come, I am willing to give up a little skin while they have given up so much more for me and you.