I've never actually been to a Remembrance Day ceremony. Despite my best intentions, I didn't even make it to the kids' Remembrance Day assembly at their school yesterday. Still, I try to watch the ceremony on television, even as a tape delayed broadcast from the CBC. As cynical as I might be about military activity throughout the world, there is still something deeply stirring about honouring the fallen, about the rituals of the trumpet blowing the Last Post, the tolling of the bells, the bagpipes, the firing of the great guns, the silence at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Mostly, I am just grateful that me and my children will likely never have to evacuate a city and hide in the bush, as our grandparents did. I'm glad my children are aware that we live in a country whose security has been safegaurded by those who have gone before. Mostly, I hope that I will never have to mourn one of my children the way this year's Silver Cross mother Claire Leger mourns her son Marc Leger.
I don't know if I will actually ever go to a live ceremony. When I picked up the kids after school yesterday, Theo was distressed that I'd missed the assembly, because he and his class had sung "In Flander's Fields". Stasha looked at him and said "you were crying after you sang". Well, yes, exactly. I know I would too. With or without the bagpipes.
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