Ceenoa

Anzac Day.

I was trying to write something about this, but the words could not capture the shiver I get inside, the incipient tears trembling on the verge of falling when I say these words:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”       ~ Laurence Binyon

Although those words were written back in 1914, specifically about WW1, they mean more to me than that.  For over a decade, as my first employment, I worked with the Defence Department.  I worked alongside friends and colleagues who might one day be encapsulated by those words.   I remember the worry that I felt at the thought someone I knew might have to go to war, and that stays with me to this day.  I have a stepson in the Navy, and I worry quietly, for his wife, for his son, for his mother and his sisters, for myself, but mostly for him.  I want him to grow old, I want us all to grow old.

I try to imagine what it must have been like for those who did not get a chance to grow old, but I cannot.  I try to imagine what it must have been like for their loved ones who got that news, and I do somewhat as my husband died at 42, but he died surrounded by those he loved, not far away amidst a war.  I live in a country that is not at war.  I cannot imagine the suffering that they endured, that others still endure now in many, many parts of the world.

All I can do is repeat those words, with compassion, with honour, with honest respect and love, and let the tears fall.

From light into darkness
may they find the light again
a place of comfort and of happiness
where peace reigns

© ceenoa