Finally Home - Capitol Hill Coffee House

They are found throughout the United States, and in countries overseas. Some of them are huge, well maintained facilities, dedicated only to members of the United States Armed Forces. Some are smaller, not so well maintained, and some are private. Still others are used by the public, and it will take a search to find that particular piece of granite that marks that final piece of property owned by someone who paid most dearly for it.

It’s not the money that counts. Sometimes the piece of land each owns was purchased by another. Perhaps a family member, perhaps an organization, perhaps donations. Some of them own a piece of land given them by the same government they had served. Some of them rest on land provided by another government, the government of a sovereign nation not their own. But the land belongs, always and forever, to the person who occupies that space.

They are called gardens of stone, so named for the carved pieces of rock that mark where the owner of each small piece of land within the garden resides.

The stone can be elaborate, carved with angels, figures, stars, crosses, or flowers. Symbols of various religions are often used, although there are some with no religious symbols at all. The stone can be plain, carrying nothing more than a name, two dates, and a branch of service. Some lie flat on the ground.

There are Mausoleums, some large and impersonal, whose only personality is evidenced in the names on the marble facings for the slots of which they are constructed. Some are smaller, dedicated to a single family.

There are some not marked at all, the home for someone lost inside himself, who reached that final piece of land from an alley, a street, from under a bridge, leaving a homelessness to find a home.

Some came to their piece of land because they could not bear living, and found some surcease in seeking that final home through their own hand. A rope, a gun, poison, a high place that beckoned, or the slower paths of drugs, or alcohol, or hunger, or just an indwelling loneliness that reached a point where their body said “No more!”.

They are white, and black, and Oriental, and Indians, and a thousand other divisions and subdivisions of humanity, deeply religious or professing atheism, and every gradient of faith in between.

They are mostly men, although more and more women have joined their ranks in recent years.

To them, it doesn’t matter. Race, religion, sex, all have been put aside.
Some are young, barely adult, only just beginning to know the world when they stopped forever to own but a small portion of it. Others were older when they stopped their journey. Still others had returned from their special places and times to live lives of relative normalcy, perhaps missing an appendage or two, perhaps sight, or sound but a memory, until they, too, went to join those who had traveled on before.

Some reached their destination after having suffered intense pain and agony, others reached it quickly, with just a flash of realization that they had ended their journey.

There are those who never got to that piece of owned land, because they finished their journey in the sea, but, in many cases, they are still remembered with emptiness below stones of marble or granite.

They all bear a common name.

Veteran.

They all reached a common destination.

Death.

They are resting, finally, after having paid their dues.

For some, their dues were paid on the field of battle. For others, the final price was exacted after weeks, months, years in hospital. For some, after years of living with themselves, and with what they had seen and done.
Each year, those gardens of stone blossom with banners of red, and white, and blue. Small flags grow to mark the homes of those who rest now. And the special day set aside for them will be marked with ceremony and tears, and prayer, and remembrance.

As it should be.

Memorial Day.

The day we set aside, to remember those who have fallen. “There shall be wars, and rumors of wars…” and the Gardens of Stone will have new occupants, new memories, new tears to be shed. Let it not be in vain.
Speak no ill of those who paid with their blood for the freedom we enjoy. Let a tear tremble on your cheek, then fall, to moisten their graves with love for their courage, their endurance, and to honor them for the price they paid.

NOTE: Copyright© 05/23/05 by Dave Hoffman

Use granted to all who identify author.

Beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere.