TUPAVIEW: MEMORIAL DAY TRIBUTE
By Mike Tupa
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
(Editor’s note: This article was originally written several years ago by Mike Tupa. We are publishing his timeless Memorial Day reflections today in his memory.)
A cemetery is more than just a collection of beautiful monuments and a resting place for loved ones.
It is a garden of memories and a library spanning the breadth of the human experience - love, tragedy, pain, enjoyment, excitement, kindness, hope, cruelty, charity, faith, achievement, wasted opportunity, accomplishment, fulfillment, and loneliness.
Each occupied spot in a cemetery represents an untold volume of life.
Only their name and vital dates - and in a few cases a brief sentence or two, or mention of parents, a spouse, or children - speak from the dust.
But each existence meant so much more than those bare facts.
In some cases, the sacrificed ground holds the remains of babies or children who never saw the world beyond a sheen of innocence and wonder.
In some spaces respose the very elderly or the soldier killed in battle.
Regardless of who lies there, each began life with the potential to be a decent, caring, productive person, according to their ability, environment, determination, vision, and goals.
Whatever they hoped to do, whatever chance they had to lift or to tear down another during this life is buried with them.
On Memorial Day, we remember and revere their lives - especially those who had the hope expressed by the poet Edgar A. Guest:
“Having lived and having tolled, I’d like the world to find,
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind.”
I suppose that of all the groups of dead we recognize on Memorial Day, none tugs at our hearts more - in a collective sense - than the warriors who died defending freedom.
Most of them knew, even before they picked up a gun or put on a helmet, that their lives were on the line.
None of them wanted to die. Many of them didn't understand the complex reasons behind the war in which they fought.
In most cases, they offered their lives for one reason - love.
Oh, they might not have realized it themselves. They might not have used the word “love”.
But, love it was, nevertheless, Love for their fellow soldier in danger, love for their family members whom they wanted to remain free, love for future generations of liberty -enjoying people whom they might never know.
As someone far wiser and infinitely greater than I, put it:
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Because of such men and women, during the past 250 years, the world has known more widespread individual freedom of choice and individual fulfillment than it had known in the previous 6,000 years combined.
When the American Army stood on the brink of collapse in the winter of 1776, it was the response of one soldier - following an impassioned plea by George Washington - that inspired others to remain and fight until others replaced them.
On that cold day, the era of the common man - free from a monarch’s edict or the tyranny of the minority - really began.
And, it’s been going ever since.
In addition to honoring those who gave their lives on the front row of the battle, others wore out their lives in a lifetime of worthwhile and grinding service as husbands and wives, parents, preachers and other servants of religion, teachers, emergency services personnel, care providers and caregivers, coaches, honest politicians, and others.
They served as warriors in a different kind of war; they are also worthy of our attention, respect, and reverence on Memorial Day. Let us honor all who left a touch of beauty and never forget.