Remembrance Sunday
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to post on Remembrance Sunday, but here are some things that spring to mind.
A friend of mine was sitting on a train once and a bloke marched into the carriage and stabbed the lad sat across the aisle from him with a kitchen knife. As he stared at the blade embedded in his chest all that the fellow could think to say was “Don’t kill me mate. I’ve got a life.” He died moments later. “If he’d been left-handed,” my friend said, “that would have been me.”
A former boss of mine is massively religious, in the borderline learning difficulties sort of way. He could never understand my view of the world. “Yes but are you saying that your love for Kate doesn’t mean anything?” This never struck me as a problem. In a universal sense my love for the people around me means nothing, and neither does yours. As a friend of mine so aptly put it once: “Do you think your stubbed toe means anything to anyone either? No, but that doesn’t mean it means any less to you at the time.”
Nowadays everyone seems so obsessed with being a Person of Significance. Celebrity is lauded for possessing no other merit than fame. Anyone who dies in a tragic manner was a special person and every death in that pointless shitfest in Iraq is a hero. Why does our human vanity fear our own meaninglessness so much? The fact that my life has no global significance does not make it mean any less to me and my loved ones.
The fact that people killed in wars are for the most part basically just ordinary, mediocre people does not make their passing less tragic. Normal lives with normal loved ones that could have happily pottered along for years. Lots of hands to hold and meals to share and ordinary, boring everyday things to do with people you love. It’s the mundanity of death that actually moves me the most.
“Don’t kill me mate. I’ve got a life.”
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France
Bravo.
Gulp. Bravo indeed.
Bravo?
Matthew, for the first time ever, and it may be because I am stupid, I am not sure what the point you are making is.
That’s a great song though.
Just that you don’t have to be considered special to be missed. Except by those that think you’re special. Gulp indeed.
Yes, just that. We seem to be afraid of not being special in some big way and I never understood that. We are special to the people around us and I don’t know why so many people don’t think that this is enough.
No matter how ordinary we all are, our passing is a tragedy for someone.
I agree with that, although I think there is a lot to be said for specifically remembering, as we will tomorrow. A community coming together to share their rememberance, their tragedies, their ‘special memories’, gives people reassurance of their and their loved ones’ worth for just being who they were. Obviously as a teenager I thought all of this rememberance stuff was just more thatcherite fascism but I blame her for making me feel that – maturity is seeing that just because they want to glory in war it doesn’t mean there isn’t something worth remembering.
So is Remembrance Day specifically about the war dead, then? They just cut to the chase and call it Veterans Day in the States (or Memorial Day, which is at the end of May). Those who die of cancer or in car crashes simply don’t rate their own holiday apparently.
Remembrance can be a completely personal experience. For me it is to quietly recall with all my heart those who did not shirk their sacrifices.
Crash I am not at all criticising Remembrance Day. If anything the opposite. Every last little death is a normal, ordinary life.
Cracking song. I’m sure I’ve got a version of that in the attic on the b-side of a Pele single… not as good as the version you’ve posted though. Cheers!