It’s time for the annual Memorial Day column; it comes around every year and like every other year I know what I want to say, and then don’t. Wally used to talk me out of it. “Don’t be stupid; don’t write that,” he’d say, as I recited a litany all too familiar to him, my military veteran husband. But he’s not here anymore to caution me, to curb my excesses.

So here goes.

Why oh why do we plant flags on the graves of veterans but not on the graves of mothers? Flags that signify courage and sacrifice, flags that honor the dead who lie beneath them? Why is it the soldiers, those trained to kill under the guise of protecting the homeland, who are honored? Why not the mothers, the life-givers?

Did I just touch the third rail of political correctness? For surely honoring our veterans is sacrosanct.

Honestly, many, if not most, of those so honored never saw a battlefield, were never in any real peril during their years in the service. Many, if not most were young men (very few military women back in the day) spending their late teens through early twenties growing up away from home.  Free from their own mothers’ censorious eyes they did things they might never have done in their hometowns. I’ve heard the stories.

So what is it about mothers? The women, often young in their late teens through early twenties, were giving birth, always in pain and sometimes in peril of their lives, bringing the next generation into being. Everything changes for her when a young woman becomes a mother: physically, emotionally, mentally. She is never the same again.

Becoming a mother changes a woman’s focus from herself to this tiny being she’s just produced. Falling in love with your child guarantees you’ll never rest easily again, for loving brings with it the possibility of losing it. Fall in love and you’re never free.

This Memorial Day, here in Lincolnville, we’re seeing the completion of our own Veterans Memorial Park, the result of years of thoughtful planning. The roster of those who served in our country’s wars is limited to those who lived in town at the time of their enlistment. For that reason there are no Revolutionary War veterans listed, since the town essentially wasn’t settled until after the War of Independence. In fact, many of our earliest settlers were veterans of the war who moved here afterwards in search of affordable land.

Another roster exists that includes the names of many who enlisted in their hometowns, but who were living here in the 1990s when the late Jackie Watts compiled it. That list has been taken down and will be preserved by the Lincolnville Historical Society, perhaps affixed to the side of the Open Air Museum which is dedicated to Jackie.

Any roster of who went to war, how many were called, how long they served, where they were sent is part of our town’s history. Yet I can’t help but think of the memorials down South to the Confederacy, and to the descendants of those men. It really happened, real men died fighting for what they believed in. The trouble is, what they believed in – slavery – was immoral. Those memorials to slavery need to come down.

There have always been those who believe war itself is immoral. Yet there seem to be “good” wars (WW II probably) and “bad” wars (Vietnam, Iraq) but we’re probably too close to make that call, aren’t we?

Are we glorifying war by all this memorializing? By flags flapping brightly in the breezes that blow through our cemeteries, by somber lists, and contemplative benches? By engraved brass plaques, parades and gun salutes?

Yes we are, some may say.  And I sometimes feel that way myself when I think of what we don’t memorialize, i.e. the mothers who birth us.

Others, those who’ve actually seen the horror that’s war, don’t want it forgotten, but never want to see it happen again.They may be the most anti-war among us.

And yes, there are definitely the war enthusiasts, those who see enemies at every turn, who endorse every weapon devised, who think military dominance makes us a great country.

Certainly some truly suffered by their military service. We’re learning how coming home without physical wounds doesn’t mean a soldier has escaped harm. The mental and emotional effects of witnessing war’s horrors can derail the rest of his life just as surely as can the loss of a limb or worse.

If the collective “we” really wanted to honor our veterans, those who’ve come home from real war zones with psychic or physical wounds, we would insist that all the veterans’ needs were taken care of by the government that sent them. Stop the reliance on private efforts, but make it a right earned by their real sacrifice.

So who should get a flag? I vote for anyone who saw war, a “good” or a “bad” one. They were there to protect us; they deserve our remembrance, our thanks. And our mothers? They do too.