Burying military dead with honors is not a recent practice. Thucydides’ account of the funerary rites of warriors who died in the Peloponnesian War reads as though it could have appeared in The New York Times:

“In the same winter the Athenians gave a funeral at the public cost to those who had fallen in this war. It was a custom of their ancestors, and the manner of it is as follows. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the dead are laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to their relatives such offerings as they please. In the funeral procession cypress coffins are borne in cars, one for each tribe, the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried an empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases joins in the procession, and the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. The dead are laid in the public sepulcher in the most beautiful suburb of the city, in which those who fall in war are always buried; with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary valor were interred on the spot where they fell. After the bodies have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the state…pronounces over them an appropriate panegyric…Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their eulogium.”

Apparently, the Greeks had less trepidation about seeing the bones of their slain warriors than we do today; it would be hard to imagine the bones of unidentified Soldier Dead “laid out in a tent” for all to honor. Of course, the Greeks did what their technology allowed them to do; our level of advancement provides us with different choices.

The public is called to honor the fallen. Theodore Roosevelt, in a 1907 Arlington National Cemetery dedication to the dead of his regiment, said “a few had the ’supreme good fortune of dying honorably on a well-fought field for their country’s flag.’” During World War I and World War II, two of Roosevelt’s own sons had this “good fortune” and another, Kermit, killed himself while stationed at a military base. Ultimately, the final resting place for fallen military is but a marker of our debt to them and their families. No ceremony can do much to assuage the loss borne by the living.

“But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract.”

Abraham Lincoln’s words are as meaningful now as they were when spoken in the Gettysburg Address. There is no “fixing” the bereaved of someone killed in service. There is only the offering of some form of recognition of their sacrifice, as reflected in the words of Pericles speaking to those who gathered at a public funeral for Peloponnesian dead: “Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here.”

I have toured several great military cemeteries – Arlington National Cemetery, of course, but also Verdun, Punchbowl in Hawaii, Normandy, and the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Some of these locations are frequently visited, some are more solitary, and each has its own special spirit.

At Arlington, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns silences the crowds. I looked at the faces of the people watching the solemn ritual and tried to fathom what they were thinking, what they knew about what they were seeing. I alternated between wanting to gather them around and tell them a story, much as a worn and weathered traveler would share his experiences with his friends during a slow evening by a warm fire, and, on the other hand, wanting to get a megaphone and bellow out that what they were witnessing was not even the beginning of the beginning of a story. I wandered up and down the hills and through the lanes where few others ventured, and even those who did usually rode the tour shuttle. Arlington is a wonderful cemetery, but my real sense of the dead came more strongly to me at other burial grounds.

At the Punchbowl in Honolulu, doves filled the hollowed-out basin with a diminutive and plaintive cry. A single bird might not be noticed, but the sounds of hundreds joined together in an unorchestrated chorus that formed a soundtrack for the visual beauty of the cemetery. I came across an elderly man with a small electric grass cutter in his hand; he was kneeling by a grave and slowly, carefully trimming the already well-tended grass around a grave. I wanted to ask him who was buried there, but left him alone with his thoughts and memories.

The U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery is like an old veteran: he doesn’t stand as straight as he used to, but he still stands tall under the spreading branches of the trees that shade the graves.

The Verdun cemetery is located in rolling farmland that also houses French, German, and English cemeteries. The words from the song, “where have all the soldiers gone?,” seem to float through the hills and valleys, wrapping its themes and lines around the multitudinous rows of crosses. There are so many dead soldiers. When I tried to contemplate the grief of the family members, I found myself incapable of doing so, stymied, as though I were trying to understand the theory of relativity. I walked among the hoar-covered marble tombstones and found myself viewing the cemetery as a single unit instead of as individual graves, much like single soldiers are lost in a division of troops standing in formation.

Verdun is old history. To a certain extent, I can distance myself from World War I with its millions of dead. But Normandy has the names of men who might still have been alive, had they not been killed in action. I stood in the cemetery on a cold February day, one of few visitors, and as I walked between the tombstones the names of the dead kept coming up before my eyes. The thought that for every grave I was looking at there were two others back in the States made me even more aware of the price paid in World War II. And to top it off, I was looking at just one cemetery of one country.

Memorial Day 1920 was a pivotal event in the healing process following World War I. Prior to that time, the aftermath of the monumental struggle consisted of rebuilding infrastructure and just “getting by.” The Graves Registration Service (GRS) planned and coordinated the ceremonies in every European country where American Soldier Dead had been buried; every grave was decorated with a flag, and cemeteries were adorned with flowers and wreaths. Clergy presided over the solemn ceremonies. In England, similar care was given to the 108 cemeteries containing American dead. Colonel Rethers of the GRS “issued orders that civilian employees be sent to every locality to purchase flowers, which they placed, together with a flag, upon every grave.”

And when it came to the expression of feelings, quartermaster personnel penned the following:

“As for the spirit of the French people on this occasion, it is almost impossible to draw a picture that would convey the desired impression of their friendly attitude and of their pathetic and most touching expression of respect for our dead. While the American people have undoubtedly a very genuine sentiment regarding the more sacred and emotional phases of life, they not infrequently lack the power of expressing their real feelings, or they are prevented from the same by a hesitancy to appear, as they think, sentimental. But the French people have no such scruples. They feel deeply and have a trained ability of expression.”

Now, Memorial Day is a commercialized event, and the papers devote much more space to advertising than to the memories of those whose deaths make such ads possible. It seems that there is no matter of the heart or spirit that is beyond trespass for the purpose of making a buck, and I am ashamed for our country when May rolls around. For my part, I celebrate Memorial Day on its original date, May 30, and resist the urge to take advantage of a three-day weekend with the “new and improved” date of the fourth Monday in May.

It was while wandering through the many graves overseas, away from noise and distracting thoughts that I began to really sense the dead. They spoke in a soft, almost undetectable manner, like gentle ocean swells that pass beneath a vessel at sea. Among the white markers I realized that we no longer have a post-death national commemoration of fallen soldiers. We have lost a singular, commemorative, and group remembrance. We have the overseas cemeteries for World Wars I and II. For Korea, we have the hundreds of unknowns buried at the Punchbowl, all in one section, and thus have a sense of the group participation and ensuing death. The Vietnam Wall memorial is an excellent substitute for a common cemetery because it provides, in one place, a visual image of the dead. But what do we have for the Gulf War and Iraq? We struggle to find something that adequately serves as a reminder of the price of war.

Fortunately, there have been efforts to educate the public about the existence of Soldier Dead as a group rather than as lost individual lives scattered throughout America. The hundreds of pairs of combat boots that have recently been displayed in various cities around the country is one example, but it is far too ephemeral. Something else of a more permanent nature will eventually have to be designed and constructed for the dead of the Gulf War and the more recent war in Iraq, a fitting memorial for the fallen, or else we will continue to be haunted by the memories of those who died for us.

Michael Sledge is a freelance journalist and writer who has studied extensively the sociology and psychology of the behavior of military personnel. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana.

It was my privilege to teach Martin Luther King, to march with him in Mississippi, agonize and pray with him in the midst of the worst violence at St. Augustine, to spend many hours counseling with him, to go through great volumes of his private papers organizing them, to spend many days and nights in his home. I know the innermost thoughts of this man as deeply as I know that of any man on earth. It has been the highest privilege of my life, this personal friendship.

Martin Luther King spoke with the tongues of men and of angels. Now those eloquent lips are stilled. His knowledge ranged widely and his prophetic wisdom penetrated deeply into human affairs. Now that knowledge and that wisdom have been transcended as he shares in the divine wisdom of eternity.

The apostle Paul has told us that when all other experiences and virtues of humanity have been left behind, faith, hope, and love remain. But the greatest of these is love.

Martin exemplified all three in the rarest intensity. Amid the tempestuous seas and treacherous storms of injustice, hate, and violence which threatened the very life of mankind, his faith was a solid, immovable rock. He received hundreds of threats upon his life, yet for 13 years he walked among them unafraid. His single commitment was to do God’s will for him; his trust was in God alone.

On that rock of faith God raised in him a lighthouse of hope. No white backlash nor black backlash nor massive indifference could cause him to despair. He dreamed a dream of world brotherhood, and unlike most of us, he gave himself absolutely to work for the fulfillment of this inspired hope. In that lighthouse of hope, God lighted in Martin a torch of love. He loved all men. Even the hate-filled foe of all he represented he tried sympathetically to understand.

He sought to relieve the slavery of the oppressors as well as that of the oppressed. While overborne by incredible pressures upon his time and energy, he yet had time to bring comfort and counsel to a bereaved boy he had never seen before or to park a car for a confused woman who was a complete stranger.

What a legacy of love is left to this faithful and gifted wife and these four dear children. They now share his dream, his faith, hope, and love — they and the faithful little band of nonviolent crusaders who have been unfailingly with him from Montgomery all the way to Memphis. They are too few, they who have already made such a costly sacrifice.

It is now for us, all the millions of the living who care, to take up his torch of love. It is for us to finish his work, to end the awful destruction in Vietnam, to root out every trace of race prejudice from our lives, to bring the massive powers of this nation to aid the oppressed and to heal the hate-scarred world.

God rest your soul, dear Martin. You have fought the good fight. You have finished your course. You have kept the faith. Yours is now the triumphant crown of righteousness. Your dream is now ours. May God make us worthy and able to carry your torch of love and march on to brotherhood. Amen.

L. Harold DeWolf (1905-1986) was Martin Luther King’s dissertation advisor at Boston University’s School of Theology. From 1965 to 1972 he was the dean of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC.

LUCKY SEVERSON (guest anchor): And now a profile of a man who knows a great deal about poetry and a great deal about funerals. He is Thomas Lynch, writer and mortician, and each of his vocations enriches the other.

BOB ABERNETHY: A cold, early spring morning in Milford, Michigan. As he has every day for 30 years, Thomas Lynch sits down to write. He is a successful essayist and, first of all, a poet. But he writes only part time.

His full-time job is across the street. Like his father before him, Lynch is Milford’s funeral director.

THOMAS LYNCH: Where’s the hearse?

ABERNETHY: Poetry and funeral direction may seem strange companions to some, but not to Lynch.

MR. LYNCH: It is the same enterprise: to organize some response to what is unspeakable. We need a way to say unspeakable things, and funerals do. So do poems.

ABERNETHY: On this day, with the family’s permission, we were present at the funeral of a 30-year-old Milford man killed in a motorcycle accident.

MR. LYNCH (to Funeral attendees): Ladies, if you would take a seat. Mass will be starting shortly.

ABERNETHY: Lynch stood with the family as they said goodbye and the casket lid was closed. He believes strongly in the importance to the living of being able to see the dead.

Lynch also values the funeral as a ceremony. Honoring the dead, he says, gives meaning to life.

MR. LYNCH: The fashions have changed, but the fundamental obligation of a funeral to sort of bear witness to a death in the family and to initiate remembrance — that’s pretty much the same.

ABERNETHY: Earlier, Lynch drove us around Milford.

MR. LYNCH: Down this street, I don’t think there is a house in the past 30 years that has not had a death in the family.

ABERNETHY: Most deaths, says Lynch, are of the aged, peacefully. But too many, he adds, are random and violent. The worst are the deaths of children.

MR. LYNCH: I remember that as a younger person, I used to often shake my fist in God’s face when there was a death of a child and say, you know, “What did you have in mind here, God?”

ABERNETHY: Lynch acknowledges that the heartbreak of all that can be overwhelming.

MR. LYNCH: In a very real sense, grief is, you know, the sort of tax we pay on loving people. And you see abject, acute grief a lot.

ABERNETHY: Lynch says all that pain both tests his faith and requires it.

MR. LYNCH: Some days, you know, it seems like stating the obvious to say, you know, God loves us. Other days it seems like we are entirely alone.

ABERNETHY: On such days, I asked, what do you do?

MR. LYNCH: Pray. Yeah. That seems to work. And I don’t know if it’s the saying of it or someone at the other end hearing of it. And this is like poetry, you know. But it works.

ABERNETHY: What also works, for Lynch, is the antidote of writing: creativity that combats the depression that can accompany what some call “the dismal trade.”

Lynch’s wife, Mary, an artist, has a studio next to their house. She says dealing with death magnifies the value of life.

MARY LYNCH: When I think I am having a bad day all I have to do is look across the street and realize that somebody else has it worse.

MR. LYNCH: Well, I’m glad to be alive. You know every day you wake up is a bonus.

ABERNETHY: Lynch travels often — here, to the College of Charleston, in South Carolina — to do readings from his books. As usual, he received a glowing introduction.

MR. LYNCH: It’s always nice to hear such kind things said about you in the present tense, and to be vertical when you hear them.

ABERNETHY: Lynch read a poem about a man facing up to the fact that someday he will die. The chances of dying, Lynch likes to say, hover around 100 percent.

MR. LYNCH (reading poetry to audience): “The future thus confined to its contingencies, the present moment opens like a gift. And what to make of this? At the end, the word that comes to him is ‘Thanks. Thanks.’”

ABERNETHY: The titles of Lynch’s books disclose how much his trade influences his writing: STILL LIFE IN MILFORD; THE UNDERTAKING, a National Book Award finalist; and his latest, BODIES IN MOTION AND AT REST.

As often as he can, Lynch visits Ireland, where one of his relatives left him a cottage. He says he loves the sounds of the language there, and those sounds influence his speech and his poetry. Often, he listens to Irish radio while he writes. Lynch is much admired in Milford. He is also becoming known nationally, not only for his writing but for his opinions.

ABERNETHY: Lynch lives in the same county as Doctor Jack Kevorkian, now in prison for assisting with suicides.

MR. LYNCH: To me, assisted suicide sounds oxymoronic, you know, like “holy war.” If the only way to get rid of suffering is to get rid of the sufferer, then I say we have not looked at our other options. I see Jack Kevorkian as a serial killer.

ABERNETHY: Lynch thinks specific arrangements for funerals should be left up to the survivors. The dead, he likes to say, don’t care. On the other hand, he has written about his own wishes. Naturally, it is a poem.

MR. LYNCH (reading poetry): “I want a mess made in the snow so that the earth looks wounded, forced open, an unwilling participant. Go to the hole in the ground. Stand over it. Look into it. Wonder and be cold. But stay until it’s over, until it’s done.”

ABERNETHY: Over 30 years, Lynch has arranged perhaps 6000 funerals.

MR. LYNCH: When I see people at this most difficult time in their family history, I am also seeing what is best about our species, you know. The attachments and the affection and the faith.

ABERNETHY: Lynch was asked how he comforts the bereaved.

MR. LYNCH: What I tell people is to find ways that grief can be managed — not gotten out of but gotten through. You tell them, I can’t fix this, but I can be with you through this.

ABERNETHY: Ceremony, symbol, metaphor — they are the essence of both of Lynch’s callings: what he sometimes calls, with a smile, “the literary and mortuary arts.”

SEVERSON: One bit of advice from Tom Lynch. He says he’s learned not only that life can be short, but that if you’re angry at someone and that person dies before you’ve made up, you can suffer a lot. Lynch told me, “I don’t hold grudges very long.”

A Poem by Thomas Lynch:

Refusing at Fifty-two to Write Sonnets

It came to him that he could nearly count
How many late Aprils he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus:sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn’t see himself at ninety-six –
Humanity’s advances notwithstanding
In health-care, self-help, or new-age regimens –
What with his habits and family history,
The end he thought is nearer than you think.

The future, thereby bound to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The greening month, the golden week, the blue morning,
The hour’s routine, the minute’s passing glance –
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.