{"id":5544,"date":"2019-11-11T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=5544"},"modified":"2019-11-11T12:46:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T20:46:00","slug":"in-the-interests-of-sleepless-humanity-11-11-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=5544","title":{"rendered":"In the Interests of Sleepless Humanity \u2013 [11\/11\/2019]"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Credit to: atlanta hot shots<\/p><\/div>\n

If yea break faith with us who die
\nWe shall not sleep
\nThough poppies blow in Flanders Fields
\n<\/em>
\nOr<\/p>\n

That the ones who call the shots
\nWon\u2019t be among the dead and lame
\nAnd at each end of the rifle\u2026
\nWe\u2019re the same\u2026 ~ Christmas in the Trenches<\/p>\n

<\/em>Or<\/p>\n

When you\u2019ve lived through two wars and a Depression, everything else is easy ~ Maude Renwick<\/em><\/p>\n

There are so so many things that I could say, that I find I have ironically\u2026had to struggle to find the words\u2026<\/p>\n

It still never feels right that it\u2019s not raining. I have been in warm climates for Armistice Day every year for\u2026a long time now\u2026and it never feels right. Cabo is out there, partying and drinking like it always does\u2026and I would give anything to be home, in the cold and the rain\u2026<\/p>\n

Oddly, of all the important days of the year, this one makes me the most horribly homesick\u2026mostly homesick for people who aren\u2019t here anymore.<\/p>\n

There are so many things I should have asked\u2026those years that I stood in my little girl party shoes in the mud\u2026and I didn\u2019t\u2026and while nothing can change that, I still think about it every year. This day isn\u2019t just about the symbols for me, it\u2019s about\u2026people who could have maybe explained it all to me, if I had only just thought to ask\u2026<\/p>\n

But there is one thing that as the years go on, I am more and more sure of\u2026<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t sleep. I know that now. Know it bone deep, as surely as I know my own name. They don\u2019t sleep.<\/p>\n

I wonder now if they ever will.<\/p>\n

I had hoped you see, that I would live to see the time when this day was really just a day of Remembrance for the lost long<\/em> ago.<\/p>\n

But I worry now that I won\u2019t see that\u2026not now. I think that we have lost the ability for peace, and as such, this day will stand as it has for years: an acknowledgement that there is always<\/em> a war. An acknowledgement that the torch has been forever passed and forever dropped, and so they don\u2019t rest\u2026because they can\u2019t. Because we failed and we keep<\/em> failing.<\/p>\n

And I still don\u2019t understand\u2026<\/p>\n

And every layer of that makes me terribly sad\u2026and if I\u2019m honest with myself, terribly, terribly angry\u2026because dammit, why don\u2019t we GET it. When are we going to figure out that war solves absolutely nothing<\/em>. War does nothing but generate more of itself. It feeds on itself until there is nothing left<\/em> except anger and sorrow and a deeply misplaced sense of warped pride.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to be a lark over the guns for so many years that my voice has gone hoarse, I don\u2019t know how much more song I have left in me.<\/p>\n

But I do still have<\/em> a voice, and as long as that is still true, I will still keep saying \u201cthis has<\/em> to change, this has<\/em> to stop\u201d\u2026I will still try to make people understand. Perhaps in my own quiet way that doesn\u2019t rattle around the world, but maybe one day I might make a difference to just one person\u2026and maybe that will have to be enough.<\/p>\n

If only for the sake of the next group of little girls standing ankle deep in the mud\u2026if only so that one day they<\/em> might be able to see a day where there really is<\/em> peace\u2026if only so that they<\/em> might one day understand what we never could\u2026<\/p>\n

If only so that one day\u2026the long dead can truly sleep\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If yea break faith with us who die We shall not sleep Though poppies blow in Flanders Fields Or That the ones who call the shots Won\u2019t be among the dead and lame And at each end of the rifle\u2026 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-1rq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5547,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/5547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}