Memorial Day Musings…5/25/2026
1) Monday. Yes. I am fully aware that today is Monday. Busy weekend (more in a moment). First road trip in the Electric Batmobile (more in a moment). I know that it isn’t Sunday.
Sue me.
2) Electrified. We took our first road trip in our first EV this weekend. 300 mile battery and a trip longer than 300 miles. A good test, really, since we weren’t in any particular hurry either out or back, and the more likely one to be anxious (that would be me) was accompanied by the one special thing that inoculates me against getting that way (that would be Beth).
In these weird times of gas prices north of $4.00 (as weird as the $1.37 during COVID) it’s kinda cool to drive by gas stations and not have to turn in and pay to fill the massive tank on my last car. Still, this is yet another example of the great Heinlein’s economics. Yes, I drive by the gas stations and don’t have to turn in, and my home gas bill has gone up a fraction of what my monthly pump charges were. But we have paid in time. Time sitting at a charging station that is 5X what it would have taken to pump the gas.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Still.
3) Joy. Beth and I traveled to Buffalo for one of the most moving and meaningful weddings we have ever witnessed. Lovely Daughter Megan officiated in the wedding of her best friend from college, Steve, to his partner of 11 years, Omar. We have known Steve for nearly 18 years and we met Omar very shortly after he and Steve became a couple. Over the years we have shared countless dinners at home and out on the town with Megan and Ryan, Steve and Omar. We were incredibly flattered and honored to be there to witness the ceremony.
And Megan just crushed it in the ceremony. I mean, she quoted RuPaul with the most perfect exhortation at the most perfect time in the proceedings!
It’s hard to describe how heartwarming the entire affair was. Mind you, not only was this a first for Beth and for me, but so, too, was the marriage of two men a first for both of the husbands’ families. But for whatever challenges family members may have had or may continue to have, the prevailing emotion was joy. Pure joy, overflowing from and between everyone present. Not a dry eye in the house when the boys embraced and kissed after being pronounce “Husband and Husband” or during the first dance. Nothing but joy, just the way it’s supposed to be at a wedding.
Congratulations to Steve and Omar!
4) It’s Memorial Day weekend. We are prompted to recall the sacrifices of our fallen soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, to be ever thankful for the lives they led and lost in the service of their fellow citizens. Men like SSgt. Povilaitis, gone at age 47, and Corporal Ryan McGhee, age 21. The loss of both men was tragic, but the timing of their loss speaks to a different kind of tragedy, one that is a particularly painful part of Memorial Day and all it stands for.
Our War dead are often buried by their parents.
One of my sisters-in-law lost her Dad a few weeks ago, leaving our assemblage of remaining parents among all or our siblings and their spouses at two. All of the timing in this seems to be pretty much standard fare: a much older parent departing and leaving adult children who are now later-in-life orphans. Alas, the losses we remember on Memorial Day are upside down, with parents and sometimes grandparents the ones in mourning. The loss is all the more stunning for its lack of warning, the inability to even perceive its possibility let alone prepare for its arrival. 10 or so years ago I visited my Dad over Memorial Day; apart of me “pre-mourned” my Dad each time I saw him, there being no mystery but the all to soon to come “when”. But the men and women we remember on Memorial Day were ripped from families that saw only the future when they gazed upon their sons and daughters.
Here then lays our focus today, to attend to the survivors. Remember the fallen to be sure, but do so in the context of remembering what their loss meant to those left behind, and attend to the survivors.
I’ll see you next week, probably on Sunday…
This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2026 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.