Thanks for Nothing, Tax Dollars OR How Not to Honor the Dead

This past Thursday, my immediate family and I attended the State of Michigan's 17th Annual Memorial Day Service, held in Lansing and at the Governor's residence. I didn't really know what to expect from the event. I knew Shane and the other Michigan soldiers who had died within the past year would be honored. Governor Snyder would sign the Gold Star License Plate bills into law. Some people would talk. We would eat some lunch. Maybe we would be sad, maybe we wouldn't.

So we traveled to Lansing. I was on edge that morning. I'm sure my mother knew that it was because the event would make me emotional, but I was not yet aware of that and thought that I would be just fine.

We watched Governor Snyder sign the Gold Star License Plate bill into law. Senator John Pappageorge made a speech before the signing about how people used to live in the front of their houses but now our license plates would serve as the front of our houses, to let people know what had happened to our loved ones, to pay their respects. It was fitting. It was respectful.

Then it was time for the actual presentation. We had received the sort of booklet that one normally receives at events like these. There are probably over a dozen littered around our house from various events. I don't know why we keep things like this; I never look at them again after the event, but there is a feeling that getting rid of them would be slightly sacreligious. That it might take a piece of Shane away. So they are kept and tucked into corners and placed into piles, only to be found months later when cleaning. They do not suffer the fate of old magazines, which are thrown in the trash when a certain amount of time passes. Instead, these pamphlets are saved from the trash heap or recycling bin, for the mere fact that that have a very specific name within their pages.

So we were given booklets. And they had pictures of the Michigan casualties from within the past year, along with some words about the men. Shane's write-up was inaccurate and did not mention that he had received a Bronze Star. It was also partially plagarized, which I will always find to be incredibly lazy and annoying. This stuck me as an indication of sloppiness, hastiness, not quite caring enough-iness.I flipped through the booklet after we had taken our seats and made it all the way up to the first speaker before I started crying. She was a Gold Star Mother, speaking about when two soldiers had come to tell her that her son had been killed. Her words were not touching to me. She was not a great orator. But still, I fled the room and perched myself on a ledge in the bathroom.

My mother followed me, making sure that I was okay. I, apparently, was not. I told her that I didn't understand why I was getting so emotional. That I was tired of being sad all the time. That I was tired of people making me sad. I told her to please go back and sit with my father. That I would not be returning but that I would be fine and mill around the Capitol Building. Finally assured that I was temporarily okay, she went back to her seat. I found my way into the old Michigan Supreme Court courtroom. As I sat in the grand room, marveling at the architecture and intricate designs painted on the walls, I could hear the first speaker still droning on, although I could not hear her actual words. At least fifteen minutes had passed since I had the room. I didn't know how she was still talking, or what she would possibly be talking about that the other Gold Star Families in the room -- who made up a strong majority of the audience -- had not experienced in some form or another themselves. And that's really when it hit me. That I had been crying not because of that woman's story, but because of my family's story. Because my mother had gone through a day when two soldiers came to the door. And my father and I received phone calls from my mother informing us of the terrible news that same day. And that woman behind the podium was bringing all that up, when I had found a way to cope and to manage and to filter through the feelings of everything that had happened since those two soldiers came to our front door. I became angry that I was being brought backward in my grief process. But more than angry, I lacked understanding. I didn't understand why the speaker was telling a story that had already been experienced by her audience. And then I found myself wondering what sort of things I would have been talking about. It would have been about Shane's life. About the sort of person he was. About how I was sure that everyone would love to give back being a Gold Star Family if they could just have a couple of seconds with their loved one. It wouldn't have been about the day the soldiers told my mother Shane was never coming home as a living, breathing person. It wouldn't have been about the funeral. It wouldn't have been about the burial. It wouldn't have been about the aftermath of any of that.

But no one asked me to speak, so I guess I'm speaking here.

After the speaking ceased and the doors opened, I was reunited with my parents. They said it was very touching when Senator Phil Pavlov placed a flag honoring Shane in a basket during some sort of ceremony. My mother said that a little girl had been eating her boogers. This made me smile and become slightly grossed out, as boogers have never sounded appetizing to me. And we piled in the car to head to the Governor's residence.

The residence is in a beautiful neighborhood, with perfectly manicured lawns and old homes. All of the Gold Star Families were made to park in a shoddy lot with cracked cement. This lot was located a fair distance from the actual residence. It was also raining and had been raining for the past few days. We schlepped our way in the rain to the Governor's residence, where we were escorted in. While the original invitation to the event had informed us that the luncheon was to take place outside, I thought that surely this plan had changed, due to the cold and rainy weather. I figured that furniture would have been moved around to accommodate the families or that we would be a basement of some sort.

But I was wrong.

We were shown right on out of the house and into the backyard. To a tent. Without side protection from the rain. Without anything to soak up the rain water that was an inch deep in the cold grass. With rows of chairs and a podium, not round or square tables. With bodies crammed together because of the cold. With people sitting in those rows of chairs with plates of food on their laps.

I was disgusted. I was horrified. I was temporarily stuck thinking that maybe I was at a 4H Fair, but then realized that at 4H Fairs there are always barns to take shelter in when it rains. And then I realized that my feet were soaking wet. I looked at my mother and father. Thankfully, my father was the first to say that it was time to go, taking the words out of mine and my mother's mouths. We walked back through the house and out the front door. We appeared in the driveway and my father pointed out that I had mud all over my leg. I found it fitting.

And so we left.

I'm disgusted that Governor Snyder put on such an abortion of an event for Michigan's Gold Star Families and Veterans. While I'm sure that he did not personally put the event together, someone who works for him did. And it was awful. It was disrespectful. It was in no way, shape, or form an event that CEOs or Representatives or Senators would have been invited to and expected to just accept. I don't know how or why other people stayed standing in that cold rain. Maybe they thought it was lovely. I thought it would have been better to have nothing at all than to have the "luncheon" they were trying to pass off. Luncheons involve tables. They involve small talk. They involve getting to know people and sharing stories. They do not involve rows of chairs in water-soaked grass, listening to someone drone on at a podium while people struggle to eat off of their laps.

So I don't think I'll be attending another one of those types of services. I don't need them. I don't like them. I don't want to hear someone else's version of my and family's experiences. I don't need a ceremony for Shane. I have a ceremony for him every single day. One that doesn't involve being soggy or sitting in uncomfortable chairs or inaccurate information. My ceremony involves love and happy memories and sometimes sad memories and knowing that I will always be carrying a piece of Shane inside of my heart, as will my mother and my father and anyone else who wants to hold Shane dear.

Graduation

Tomorrow, I will graduate from law school. When I began law school, I admittedly had no idea what I was doing or what I had gotten myself into. I knew that it would be tough, but I did not realize that it would change the way I looked at the world, the way I thought, and the way I engaged with others.

Along the way, I read more books and cases and statutes than I ever thought possible. Certain semesters, I spent 14 hour days at school. About once a year, I had horrible moments when I doubted everything about myself and didn't think that I was smart enough to be at law school. I met other people who also want to be lawyers, some of whom will be very bad lawyers, and some of whom will be very good and honest lawyers. Some of those in the latter category became my dearest friends, who I consider to be family and understand me in a way that few people do.

Most importantly, I found myself at law school, and finding myself meant that I know what type of lawyer I want to be, even though job prospects are currently few and far between for my colleagues and myself. I will be hardworking and advocate zealously for my clients, no matter if that client is a multi-million dollar corporation or a single person. I will not be consumed by a need to make money, but instead a need to feel that I am making someone else's life better and to be content with my career. I will be ethical and remember that legal decisions impact real human lives and I must always be able to sleep with myself at night.

I should feel pretty good about myself and about my graduation tomorrow. Instead, I'm weepy and edgy. I don't want to have to put on a cap and gown and hood and smile. I don't want to pose for photographs. I don't want to be involved a ceremony or sit with my fellow graduates or be handed a piece of paper. But mostly, I don't want to look up in the audience only to find that the person I want to be at my graduation the most isn't there, knowing that he should be.

And when I say "should be," I mean that in the literal sense, because Shane would be home from Afghanistan right now. And his leave time would have started. And he would have been sitting in the audience and I would have been able to find him in a sea of faces. And once I had found him I would have waved frantically, and mouthed "Hi, buddy," and grinned like an idiot. And he would've smiled and shaken him head slightly at how goofy I looked and waved back.

The last contact that I ever had with Shane was a text message that I received on November 5, 2010, at 9:33 p.m. my time:


Hey found out we're all supposed to leave here no later than April 18. My leave starts may 13! Love you. Gonna sleep after guard sooo tired

I responded:

That's awesome, buddy! I think I graduate that day! Love you so much! Sweet dreams.

Shane was in an area that's eight or eight and half hours ahead of my time. Meaning he sent that message at either 5:33 or 6:03 a.m. on November 6, 2010. I know now that he didn't go to sleep, even though he was so tired. I'll never know why, and I'll always be a little bit sore at him for not just going to sleep. Instead, as I read later in reports, he went to the gym, and then he became involved in a firefight, during which he was killed.

Within an hour of sending me that message, he was killed. Of course, I didn't find out until the middle of the afternoon my time on November 6, 2010, that Shane had been killed. So I had half a day where I thought that my brother was going to be home for my graduation. Ever since he left for Afghanistan, I had it in my mind that he wouldn't be there. But that half a day of knowing that he would be at the ceremony has made the last week and the upcoming tomorrow torturous for me.

So tomorrow will be tough. I won't be happy like I should be. I might get weepy. But I will go and I will put on a cap and gown and hood and smile. And I will pose for photographs. And I will be involved a ceremony and sit with my fellow graduates and be handed a piece of paper. And I will probably still look up in the audience, knowing that he won't be there but having to look anyways, just in case, for the person I want to be at my graduation the most, not being able to find him, knowing that he should be there.