Women's Crossroads

Memorial Day is usually celebrated by veterans marching in parades down Main Street, USA, to remind us of their service to the country. It's a day to remember those who have given their lives to keep America "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It's supposed to be a sad day, a kind of collective mourning for those we've lost along the way.

Instead, most Americans take the opportunity of the long weekend afforded by Memorial Day to get some well-earned R&R with their families, to barbecue and celebrate the onset of summer. And can anyone really blame us for wanting a little relief from the grim realities of war?

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 2, 465 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the start of hostilities there. Every day that number goes up. Included in this count are 60 U.S. servicewomen who have died in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan since 9/11/2001. "These 60 deaths," says Pamela Burke of Women's ENews, "outnumber female fatalities in Korea, Viet Nam, and the first Iraq War combined."

Also grim is the number of wounded soldiers returning home. Not even counting the tens of thousands with post-traumatic stress syndrome, there are 17,500 wounded vets walking our streets, just since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq in 2003. About 400 of these are amputees.

No, I don't think we can be blamed for wanting to just forget about this horror for a while and enjoy planting our gardens in the first warm weather of the season. And yet...our blessing and our curse as human beings is that we cannot be oblivious to the impact of the past and the present on the future. We cannot live totally in the moment, like the birds who are busily building their nests on these lovely May days.

I chose to celebrate Memorial Day by forgetting about the war for a while. But now the holiday is over, and it's time to resume the fight. The good fight! The fight against war.