Memorial Day

What will they say about us after we are gone? Memorials of those dead or lost happens once a year. We are supposed to get into this holiday or not and go to the mall and spend a lot of money to distract ourselves from this awareness of death and loss. Memorial Day was for remembrance of warriors lost in wars or who fought in wars and died later. Life outside of war also has casualties not necessarily blessed by Pentagon bullets or terrorist IEDs.
If I called it "Day of the Dead" instead who would know if it was Halloween or Memorial Day. I could call it "buy flowers and drop them at a graveyard day" but that's too long and sounds like a florist's holiday. Or a salute to memory a mental resource slipping away out the door in many boomer's homes included here with an aging parent getting excited about meeting up with her grandmother who has been dead for 30 years. (ancestors calling)
This(life) is the place between birth and death. More human beings alive than dead on this planet(celebration time?) yet the ancestors get top billing since they already made their marks on the world.
The old one talks like she is once again five years old then she is a teen getting asked out on her first date with the preacher's son. A dream? Medication(side effect) or dementia. This is the way she lives each day, immersed in memory desire and regret(aversion)nothing new here on memorial day.
I do think of it as a day of the dead. Friends and family gone on to the next stage some by nature some by choice and others by design, I suppose, or if a deity is involved all by design. This would be easier if I had faith in design of manifest destiny or destiny period. I have been reading James Hillman's tome on calling and character. The soul that accompanies us on our journey and forces us to follow a path i.e. soul purpose or was that sole porpoise...
Why think at all if everything is just easily and blindly following with trust faith and devotion? I sometimes envy the dead or the religious braindead. They have no(or fewer) anxieties nor regrets. Of course later(maybe) in hell they may have some regrets but no ablity to make a shift in their karma. My own fate is still in flux I still have a slight chance of making a difference(redemption) if I can remember how to live fully and celebrate life without bitterness (salvation).
That is THE challenge for me. The peaceful happy times were not so really and I wish not to repeat them nor wish to relive them. It is this frame of mind that makes me miserable realizing the past is not great or my resume, bank balance, and references would look better. So I lie a little to myself but I know what it was really like deception betrayal defeat and many recoveries. I still have some attachment to false competencies and retaining a semblence of reasonable success. My beliefs and sanity depend on self-defined sucess or what I define as life and what life defines as me. I remember my tribe and my life as a monk. I was a part of mindful living after losing my father and a hole was left inside of me. I guess the pain is bearable now because I know I can endure a lot and still emerge to live again.
This is what I remember today. I can be happy and I can be sad I hope it all comes back to me.
All of it. Then I will know I have arrived here ready to go there. Happy Memorial Day.