The words are in my head when I wake.

Memorial Day.

I should write about it, I think.

But my brain is restless.

For one thing, the weather.

I rise with the sun and patter, barefoot, to the kitchen. Pink light is spilling through the blinds before I open them. Thunder rolls in the distance. The forecast is severe. I stand in the bay window’s rosy glow as a soft rainshower begins. No birds in sight. The usual morning chorus of robins, house finches, cardinals, Carolina wrens is paused. Silence, but for the occasional caw of a crow near the woods. My neighbors’ freshly-planted roses are blinding red against the green grass, the weathered-wood fence. Stark white curtains hanging from their gazebo flutter like ghosts, like prelude…what’s past is prologue, as states the murderous Antonio in The Tempest.

That’s the second thing. Ghosts.

The imagery distracts me.

I ordered a ghost from a catalog, once. When I was a child. True story.

It was disappointing.

That was before I knew that ghosts have many manifestations. And to be careful what you wish for.

There’s always a cost. Ghosts aren’t free.

Why I’m thinking this just now, as the sun fades away into gray, as the lights in the house blink, as the skies crack open, releasing the predicted deluge, as my little dachshund curls into a ball on the kitchen rug, shivering uncontrollably…I do not know, exactly.

On the table I have a small arrangement of red, white, and blue flowers, in honor of the day and my country’s fallen soldiers. I recall learning that my first real home was once an Army hospital morgue.

It’s dim, but I can remember living in that shadowy house at age three, until my family was forced out. I wonder which WWII soldiers were brought there before their burial, before my time.

I light a candle by the flowers, against the encroaching darkness. At the window, a tiny ember-red flash. Male ruby-thoated hummingbird, undeterred by the tempest, coming for a drink of sugar-water at my feeder. Over by the wooden fence,in front of the gazebo’s billowing white veils, a fluttering of blue wings… bluebirds seeking to feed their young. Despite all. Above all.

Sustenance.

New thought: That’s what this day is about.

Sacrifice, prayer, and peace, too…in fact, the word prayer is mentioned four times in the legal language for the holiday (read it for yourself: 36 U.S. Code § 116 – Memorial Day). Peace appears twice. Contextually, in a call to pray for permanent peace, according to each individual’s faith.

That’s in the law of our land.

As the storm descends, I pick up my trembling dachshund. There’s no way to tell him it’s only temporary. I can only hold him ’til it’s over. Sustenance. The lesson of the birds. The whole purpose of prayer. Of faith.

Memory. It’s for teaching. If what’s past is prologue…it cannot be changed; but the present, the future, can. If we remember. If we do not remember the past, as the saying goes, we are condemned to repeat it.

That’s the lesson of the ghosts.

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
-sharing your writing is a true act of courage.