Memorials

I recently read an article about atheist protest against a religion-labeled public monument in an Ohio city. The secular arguments were compelling. After all, separation of religion and government in the U.S. is a basic liberation principle of our Constitution. It has been under threat for over thirty years, since Ronald Reagan legitimized the religious (Christian) Right Wing in order to get elected to the Presidency. 

Those who try to erect memorials of any kind carry a certain entitlement. Somehow they feel that harping on the past is a holy thing, which should be above any criticism. I encountered this within my own minority (LGBT) community during the height of the AIDS deaths in the U.S.. For example, when I was the director of a residential AIDS hospice in the mid-1990's, I discouraged visitors from working on the AIDS Quilt panels in the building for their loved ones who were still alive there. I explained my rationale in each case: The loved one was still alive and did not need someone at his bedside waving a symbol of his death in his face. The AIDS Quilt had great value for mourners. It had little value for the dying. The dying needed love, reassurance and constant physical care.

Those visitors who chose to get into a battle over my policy were ruthless. They channeled their rage at mortality and loss into trying to engage me in a fight. They complained to my superiors. This reinforced my philosophy about the issue. This quilting business was all about them, not about my patients, to whom I owed my absolute loyalty and attention. Some time after I left my position at the hospice due to my own battle with AIDS, I visited an exhibit of the AIDS Quilt and saw images of my patients here and there. This held value for me and my own grief, but I did not regret my hospice policy.

Memorials reveal a great deal about the human fear of death and fear of repercussions from bad deeds. I think war memorials are the creepiest. I see them as subliminal confessions by people in power to the atrocity of warfare. Watching the loved ones of fallen soldiers embrace a war memorial saddens me. This is a submission to violence and war by those damaged by it. Would a Jew or homosexual sentimentally embrace timbers at a Holocaust memorial set up in a concentration camp? 

I applaud the designers of marker-free cemeteries. I applaud those who spread cremated remains in sea or garden. I have specified in my own will that my cremated remains be scattered or planted. Feeding a plant with my remains is a comforting image. It seems the least I can give back to the planet after taking so much from it as a person in the developed world. 

Perhaps the best memorial we human beings can provide for future human beings is a healthy planet, free from injustice and violence. Far greater than carved stone on concrete pedestals is the gift of a peaceful life with healthy food, clean water and breathable air. Right now such a legacy seems unattainable as human population spirals out of sustainable limits. Right now our memorial may well be a world of machines where the quality of human life becomes less and less important.