Remembering
For me, this past Rememberance Day came and went amidst a flurry of long work days and sleep deprivation, and even a week later I am still feeling strangely upset about not having given the proper time and consideration to what the day is meant to be, or at least what it usually means to me.
It's mostly because of the untimely location I found myself in on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day: a chaotically bustling Walmart in Scarborough, buying hundreds of dollars worth of Christmas decorations, toys to be used as props, and assorted other garbage for a holiday themed Staples commercial I was working on. When the nerve-racked teenaged employee came over the crackling loudspeaker in broken English to inform everyone that it was eleven o'clock, and time for a minute of silence, there were mixed reactions among the hundreds of early Christmas shoppers. For many, it was confusion: either because they couldn't understand English, couldn't understand the version of English that the young man had spoken, or didn't realize what rememberance day was. Slowly, as those still walking through the store, or obliviously perusing the clothing racks looked around and realized everyone was standing still, they too began to stop, silently, alarmed and perplexed. One particularly bewildered customer just kept strolling around with her cart, talking on her cellphone, despite another woman angrily screaming "It's eleven o'clock, maam. Excuse me! Excuse me!" Incidentally, this entire confused 'moment of rememberance' was set to the soundtrack of loud, terrible jazz, spilling out from the Walmart Wine shop at the front of the store, that apparantly could not be disabled by the baffled clerks. Despite it all, I was trying my hardest to block out my surroundings and give this symbolic moment a chance - to acknowledge that if it weren't for the bloody sacrifice of so many millions of young lives over the history of this country, we wouldn't be standing here in a bargain-basement wonderland of cheap luxuries, fat and comfortable with nothing to fear but our own obesity and depression. But before I could let the ideas fully take hold, a new announcement came blasting through the loudspeaker:
"Right now, when you come into McDonalds and order a gooey, delicious cinnamon bun, you get a free coffee!
Hungry for lunch? Don't forget to try our succulent, all white meat chicken nuggets with your choice of dipping sauce!"
And with that, our communal attempt at silence was irreperably shattered and we all instantly resumed our shopping.
It doesn't take long for a person start taking something for granted. How many months did it take before we started using the internet as if we'd had it all of our lives? Cell phones? And something as monumental as a few million young lives extinguished in the name of our continued freedom - apparantly only two or three generations, maybe less. I wonder how many more years until November 11th is only celebrated by a select few, nostalgic souls - or will another war worth remembering come first?
I just can't help that feeling of sickening doom mixing with guilt in the pit of my stomach when I watch how quickly and easily we can forget how fragile our way of life is. We have earned none of this.