An Emotional Holiday

A bag of fast food, something I haven’t eaten since a rather college-type evening in Missoula, sits with grease spots on top of a tall table I got as a gift and am not sure where to put but in the middle of my living room.

My pooch is warm and asleep next to my leg and I am slouching on the floor with my head on the faded leather couch that fills space along my living room wall.

Adele croons her way out of the laptop and into my head filled with thoughts of this weekend. It’s hard to decide what to write about. This weekend held so much.

Whitewater.

Wow.

I think that word could describe Saturday and Sunday. Because it was WOW. So many people. So much water.

And while that was what I was set on writing a column about, today, Memorial Day, felt so much more powerful than that water.

I covered the Bigfork Community Cemetery service this morning. Clouds, green grass and a red wreath of roses behind three simple white crosses.

I photographed and felt intrusive — as any newspaper photographer should — as I tried to capture what I felt the ceremony was about. The gun salute snapped me to attention and as Taps made its way out of the trumpet I couldn’t hold it in. I teared up and with a lump in my throat tried to perform my journalistic duties.

“Not a hardened reporter yet, huh?” Carol Edgar said as she gave me a hug. “Anyone who doesn’t cry when Taps starts to play just isn’t human.”

Perhaps not true for all circumstances, but for this particular circumstance, the one she was referring to, I agree with her.

For me it’s not about the sacrifice made for our country, although that is an incredible sacrifice, and it’s one of the reasons we are all here, living and free.

It’s empathy for those who have lost a piece of themselves to the death of another.

The parents of children, spouses of spouses, siblings of siblings and children of parents. For them it’s not just on Memorial Day they remember the fallen. For them it’s every day.

I’m not sure why, but at that service it really hit home to me. I’m sure I didn’t capture that feeling in the photographs I took, just as I’m struggling to lay down in front of me the way that it made me feel.

So many wars we’ve fought as a country over the last three centuries, so many lives we’ve lost to the power of an enemy with a weapon. It is really something.

I have buddies who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and I can see the burden they carry because of who and what they lost to those wars.

My heart goes out to them and to all who have lost.