What it's about

England has a lot of touching memorials to its war dead. Last year we visited in the weeks leading up to November 11th, which is their Memorial Day. Everywhere you went, people were selling those red paper poppies and everyone was wearing them. The first time we visited England, we arrived a few days after their memorials, and every monument was covered in wreaths made from those red paper poppies. They're quite a striking sight. The memorial you see here is in the floor of the Temple Church in London. Yes, that's the place where some of the main action in the movie "The DaVinci Code" was filmed.

We bought paper poppies in England, and I brought them home with us. I also buy "buddy poppies" from the Veterans of Foreign Wars every year. I keep them all together in a little vase in my china cabinet.

The English have a lot of memorials to Americans who died fighting alongside the British during the First and Second World Wars. There's a place in Westminster Abbey, and a place in St. Paul's Cathedral dedicated to the American war dead.

Even though I usually spend Memorial Day doing something fun (this year I'm going to see the Lipizzaner Stallions perform) I do think about what the holiday is for. The American side of my family hasn't lost anyone to a war since the American Revolution, but on my mom's side, the German side, one of my uncles died at the Russian Front during WWII. Mom's family was opposed to Hitler (and paid dearly for their opposition), but that didn't stop the Nazis from dragging her oldest brother out of the house "by his heels," as Mom told me, on Christmas Day, and forcing him into the army. The family never saw him again, and they don't know where he was buried.

Memorial Day used to be known as "Decoration Day." It was supposed to be for decorating the graves of those who died in armed conflict after the Civil War, but in the twentieth century the name changed and the holiday's scope broadened. In some parts of the United States, though, people use the holiday to remember anyone who has passed away, not just members of the military.

This weekend is also the unofficial start of the summer, so I'll be in high gear (and high dudgeon) until Labor Day rolls around. What fun.