In the United States 30 May is Memorial Day. It is a day for reflection, personal and public. In the public corner, our little town marks the day well and quietly. Each year the town hosts a small parade. It is really just the high school marching band and veterans of wars walking at march pace from the center of the village to the cemetery on the edge of town. The parade is managed with dignity and just enough fun. The marching band is always prepared and poised. The old soldiers, represented by the American Legion, take the responsibility for the day seriously. The cemetery too is well maintained and ready for its close up.
This past Memorial Day my daughter and I barreled into town from the north just barely in time for the parade, and got firmly stuck in a line of cars just past the grocery store, the police having blocked Maple Street early, giving the marching band plenty of room to maneuver. Antonia and I parked the car in the dirt along the edge of the pavement and raced toward Cemetery Road, she carrying the camera, me hanging on to my morning coffee. We first saw the parade in the distance, a small swarm of figures coming our way, up the slight hill from the center of town toward Cemetery Road, band music echoing up the hill toward the blocked traffic. Antonia began firing pictures. She took so many they play back like an old-fashioned movie, each frame not capturing quite enough of the action but more than enough to tell the story.
The story is a police car, an honor guard and the Stowe High School and Middle School marching band parading through town. This contingent led a group of spectators – possibly fewer than were officially marching in the parade – up Maple Street from the village. The parade and its gaggle of spectators made the sharp turn off Maple Street and down Cemetery Road. (Well executed box turn, marching band.)
The parade paused along its route on the bridge over the little river, just by the entrance to the quiet path, where people can walk their dogs around the edges of two large meadows. A benediction was said. From where we stood, near the band, we could see something was thrown into the river. We couldn’t tell what it was.
A contingent of the band stepped out of formation and walked to the bridge. They turned to face us and played a mournful version of ‘America the Beautiful.’ The crowd stood and watched silently. It seemed to me we were all lost in our own thoughts and memories. The small group of players then rejoined the marching band and the parade continued to the cemetery.
At the cemetery the honor guard halted to the left of the flagpoles. The flags, hanging at half-mast on their tall white poles, drooped low in the hot humid and newly minted summer heat. The band marched along the gravel path, beating out their movement with one muffled drum, making a long circle around the honor guard. The crowd stood, some in the shade and some in the sun, waiting for the band to swing round and come to a halt.
Someone read “In Flanders Fields.” It makes you think, that poem. Another prayer was said. There was a muttering of ‘Amen’s.’ The honor guard fired off its loud and symbolic salute. For the second time a subset of the marching band broke off, playing again a quiet version of an old patriotic tune, giving us a melody to accompany our thoughts. And while they played, two trumpeters, unnoticed, walked off a distance and stood apart from each other. After a silent moment they played a duet of ‘Taps.’ Not since Montgomery Clift played the tune late in the movie “From Here To Eternity” has it been played as well.
My daughter and I reminisced. Part of the joy of Memorial Day used to be we’d see our neighbor, Gaylord Gale, who was in the honor guard. He is gone now. Now we watch Callum marching with the terrific band. I looked around at the other parents watching kids march. I remember other kids who were in the band and are grown and gone now. Antonia and I think of friends and neighbors who have lost loved ones in the tragedies of the past ten years. We think of them while Taps is played. And this brings up the private part of Memorial Day.
Sometimes in our lives we meet people and they become closer than family. We lost such a friend, the inestimable Elinor Earle, this past Sunday. We were lucky to know her and to become so close and we will miss her forever. It is too much to even contemplate right now, let alone write about, but it must be said there are some people who burn brighter in life and, again, we were lucky to be her friend and it is beyond sad that she is gone.
I keep going back to the prayer on the bridge. I watched the river while the prayer was being said. When the prayer ended the band regrouped and marched across the bridge, the band of spectators in tow. I looked down at the turgidwater, churning and brown, pouring fast downstream. The river was swollen, just contained. The banks looked tired from holding the heady flow for so long this spring. The water flowed along under the bridge in its torrent and was gone. The river is still here.
David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2011 David Rocchio
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