The obvious one is buy and wear a poppy.
This year I saw three beaded poppy pins in Rebecca’s office, ones that she had purchased at Indigenous craft fairs and there were laying on that small strip of her bookshelves that run along where the books are standing.
She gave me one of those to wear which wearing has deepened my feeling about the day coming up.
I like to tuned into the CBC’s broadcast of the Remembrance Day Ceremony on parliament hill.
I always read the short memoirs of veterans and war brides in the newspaper, usually the Calgary Herald, but this year the The Times Colonist.
As I have been out walking, I have wondered why there is no food celebration around this day. Oh, I could buy something decorated with poppies, or even make a poppy seed chiffon cake but in our family we have never marked larger family gatherings with this day.
The most celebratory moments of this weekend have always been when I am around Greg Bates. If someone asks him to read “In Flanders Fields”, he can do the poem from memory. I wonder why I have never taken the time to memorize it. Well, actually, I have, but then I forget the second and third stanza.
But Greg doesn't.
At any point of the day, in any day of the year, Greg can say this poem by John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In my home we stood together, heads bowed, at 11-11-11. We each shared a thought. Mine included mention of going to Vimmy Ridge with Uncle Greg one year for Rememberance Day. Joaquim reminded us that today marked 101 years since the signing of the armistice was to come into effect for WWI. David had participated in an assembly on Friday where they had read the poem, "In Flanders fields..." I wish we had played a recording of The Last Post. My memory of it played in my head during our 2-minutes of silence.
ReplyDeleteI was out walking in the 10th hour of the morning. I was watching people going to one church, wearing their poppies on their lapels. And then at the Catholic Church on the way back up Gordonhead Road I watched the people filing out of church, shaking hands with the frocked minister and his colleague and then walking in single line up to their cars. There seemed to be no hanging around and chatting today.
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