Memorial Day
I wrote this pen-and-paper style yesterday in the airport coming back from WisCon:

The woman sitting next to me is reading a pullout section of the paper. On its cover is a color photo of a boy--maybe five years old--kneeling by a gravestone in Arlington, laying yellow flowers at its foot. The title of the piece is "The Land of the Brave." The photo made me cry--literally, here in the airport, tears came to my eyes. The caption made, makes, me mad. Is this bravery?

I suppose the boy is brave, in the way humans are generally brave, when we're put in an impossible situation. I imagine this boy's life--it's impossible to go on after that, yet he goes on. Driving from Madison to Chicago, I spent a while imagining Amanda's life if I were to die on the way home, to leave her and never come back. It's simply impossible, yet these things happen, all the time, and for the most part, we go on.

But to me the photo is not about bravery, but about the cruelty we inflict on our children, in the name of preserving a good, just, and brave world for them. Why do we do this? How can we stop it?

I asked the woman for the photo when she was done reading the section. Looking closer, I see that the man died in 2005. The boy in the picture was indeed Amanda's age when his father died. Or perhaps it was his uncle, or a family friend. I pray that he was, that they all are.

I would like to talk to the photographer who took this picture. Did they intent for their work to be framed this way? Did they see what I see in this image, or to them was it really the poignant, sweet, story it has been presented as in the article?