One brother wore blue
One brother wore grey
One brother he went
And the other one stayed
One brother is here
One brother is there
Where shall I go lord and what colours shall I wear?
I’ve seen this day come and go in all weathers, but even with the fog lying on us like a thick white blanket; it still doesn’t feel right that it isn’t raining. It was, as I have said many times, always raining, always mud slicking the shiny patent of my good dress shoes. Always wishing I had boots or gloves.
Back then I cried because it was expected of me, because everyone else was crying, because I knew instinctively that the occasion was sad and serious. I was more interested in being seen in my pretty party shoes than in understanding what was going on, but as I got older I came to understand more than I wished. Except why, I never could understand why.
I still do not understand why. I used to think that I would understand the necessity and the concept of war when I got older, but I still do not. I don’t think I ever will, I think perhaps I do not want to.
And if that makes me a pacifist, perhaps that is my fate.
I will never understand humankind’s apparent need to destroy all of humanity in the desperate drive to lay claim to some kind of pride. Some kind of an illusion, or an invisible line on the map. If you were to fly above the world you would not see any boundaries etched into the earth, but you would see the devastation that fighting for them has caused.
But that’s not what this day is about. I would give so much for the days of mud-slicked ground and carefully carved memorials to be behind us, but that doesn’t mean that I ever forget how lucky I am to have had my freedom fought for and won, very hard won, and I – for one – do not believe that they sleep. That faith has been so long broken I don’t quite see how they could do so. Every bombing, every innocent life taken, disturbs their rest further. They deserve so much more than one day, and yet it seems sometimes that 24 hours is all we see fit to give them, and even that is not what it once was.
The guns are no longer silent and if we are honest with ourselves it has been many many years since they ever were. There are countries where larks no longer fly at all, let alone have their song heard amongst the blasts under their wings.
And I still remain that little girl, clutching her grandmother’s hand in her black patent party shoes, and later on in a girl guides’ dress blues, wondering …why?
Because the ones who call the shots
Won’t be among the dead and lame
And at each and of the rifle..
We’re the same…