Arlington 

 

I was 10 when we visited Arlington National Cemetery.  Of course I’d been to a cemetery before; there was Oak Hill in San Jose, California where Grandpa Johnson was buried, which true to its name was covered in beautiful spreading oak trees; and there were the old Indian burial grounds behind our house in Northern California where the headstone of a Native American soldier killed in World War I stood alongside small metal markers engraved with names and nothing else.  I walked to that cemetery often to run my fingers over the stone, the carved cross on the front, the aged granite, and the old bullet holes left by restless teenagers from years past.  The burial ground never spooked me though the kids at Canyon Union Elementary would tell stories of wailing Indian ghosts and restless spirits.  To me it was hallowed ground, a peaceful spot where I would sit in the warm summer sunshine of the Southern Cascades.  It wasn’t a well kept place by modern standards.  The graves had collapsed into themselves, leaving indentations in the earth where the grass was flattened by sleeping deer.  The wildflowers grew whichever way they wanted and the manzanita crept closer every year creating a bower beneath which the dead could sleep.  It never bothered me, the wild, natural demeanor of the burial grounds; it actually seemed fitting somehow.  

 

I don’t know that I thought great thoughts while sitting there on that rocky red soil; it was just a pleasant place to rest after climbing the hill behind Kabyai Court.  As my brothers can attest, my thoughts didn’t range much beyond playing with my friend J.J. or which book I’d read last or what picture I was drawing.  I had a happy little world: I was secure in my home, had plenty to eat, and my parents loved each other and me.  They had instilled in me a love for the world around me and for the soil beneath my feet.  I remembered working in the garden with them back on the “Apple Ranch,” picking apples from beneath the trees for the cider press, or watching Mom bake bread or make cheese in the crock pot.  A hundred different memories made up my love for the land at that time in my life, and all of them were pleasant. 

 

Arlington changed that for me. 

 

We had just come from visiting my brother Kirk at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and my brother Kris at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, where he was stationed for basic training, and had spent a day at Gettysburg as well.  The thoughts of the war between brothers and my own brothers in the Army were fresh in my mind as we drove through those gates and saw Arlington for the first time. 

 

Arlington was such a marked difference from the little wild burial ground in Lakehead, with its perfectly straight rows and well groomed grass.  It was a crisp autumn day, not hot, not cold, just cool and perfect.  I watched from the window as we passed the white headstones, row upon row like a perfectly planted field of corn or a well tended orchard; straight lines and diagonals crossing over themselves again and again.  The number of headstones astounded me.  Like the wheat fields of Kansas and the corn fields of Iowa, I was amazed by the sheer size and perfection of the placement. 

 

We had come for no other reason than just to see it.  We didn’t bring a wreath for anyone.  We didn’t look for any one person or weep over a solitary grave.  We had come to see the place where our American dead had been given a place of honor.    

 

“Our dead.”  That is how I thought of them.  In all my memories of Arlington that is probably what stands out the most—the sense of common ownership.  These fallen heroes, from the unknown soldiers to John F. Kennedy, were mine.  This was the American hallowed ground—no bower of manzanita or wildflowers growing free, just rigid formality and an ideal perfection.  We had no family that I knew of buried in that ground, but I felt the kinship nonetheless. 

I stood beside my mother who watched, tears running down her face, as the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier took place.  It was beautiful, the solemnity with which the guards took their place beside fallen comrades, the absolute firmness with which they stood at their post.  It was seeing that young man stand there so straight and strong that changed something within me; my perception of the land began to shift, and memories of my time on the Ranch began to rearrange within my heart.  

 

Here stood a young man, handsome and true in his dress uniform, next to the grave of another young man who had once stood straight and true as well.  I had a very good imagination as a child, and I could easily see that soldier who, as the tomb says, was “known only to God” lying lifeless on a jungle floor or on a lonely beach or in a ravaged forest.  I imagined another child like me waiting for a father or a brother who would never come home.  What would it be like to never know?  How would it change your life? 

 

I stood there and remembered the love in my Grandfather’s voice when he spoke of my brothers who were serving, or who had served in the military.  He was such a patriotic person, a man who saw his citizenship as a responsibility rather than a right; to him it was a sacred obligation.  Something was working in me as I stood there, something profound and deep that I didn’t have words to express. 

 

We left the cemetery and traveled to the Mall in Washington D.C.  We went to the top of the Washington monument.  We saw the Smithsonian museums, and we went to the Wall. 

 

It’s an amazing monument really, similar to Arlington in its aesthetic principles:  its sheer size, its clean lines, the black granite rather than the white, and the names.  So many names.  It is a symbol of the impact that the Vietnam War had on the whole country.  I grew up in Northern California where the necessity of the war was still hotly debated, nearly a decade after it had ended, on street corners, in the post office lobby, or in grocery store aisles.  The Wall represented it all.  The volume of names told of how many American families were touched by the war.  The black granite seemed to hold a wealth of grief for those who fought because their country said they needed to, for those who fought because they felt it was the right thing to do, and for those who didn’t want to fight at all but had the courage to try to make the best of a bad situation. 

 

I watched my mother weep again as she placed her hand against the cold granite and read names out loud.  They weren’t names she knew; she wasn’t looking for a specific person.  Once again the names were “our dead.”  These names were the common property of all Americans, the grief in the cold stone a common grief.  

 

As I stood there, surrounded by the memory of life and death, the feelings that had begun to shift inside me at Arlington settled into a new shape, a new understanding, and nothing was common anymore.  I recalled a conversation I had overheard between two men back home, reflecting their anger at the waste of life in the war and the pointless deaths of so many soldiers.  I remembered their words, and it made me angry.  

 

Like my mother I placed my hand against the cold, dark granite, and I felt in my heart the truth that came out of my mouth that day: “Your life was not a waste; your death was not pointless.  I’m here; I’m free, and I remember.” 

 

For the first time in my life I understood why my parents loved the land so much, why they prayed over crops and wept over lost farm animals.  I had never fully understood before that day that the peace we enjoyed on our farm, the pleasant memories of warm hay in the summer and spicy apples in the fall, had a price and that these young men were among the numbers who had paid it.  The men and women that slept beneath the green fields at Arlington had paid it; the youths whose blood had reddened the meadow at Gettysburg had paid it; my own brothers were enlisted and would pay for our peace with their time and lives if necessary. 

 

Every name on that wall mattered; every name on those white stones at Arlington mattered.  Not one sacrifice was a waste; not one life lost was unappreciated.  I stood there in the cool autumn sunshine, and my love for the land deepened.  My appreciation for the ability to watch the seasons, the sowing and reaping, increased.  I have never forgotten it.  

 

This book is in part my letter of thanks, my witness to the families of our dead that they are remembered, loved, and appreciated—that their sacrifice has not gone unnoticed and that even the soldiers whose names are known only to God have a place in my heart.  

 

It is because of them that I am free to walk my father’s fields.

 

 

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