You can ask ten different people and none of them will be able to tell you that Memorial Day started at the end of the terrible carnage of the Battle at Gettysburg where the Southern forces advanced to threaten the north.  The war soon ended after Antietam and it was observed that people came to the graves dug at these battlefields and tidied them up, decorating them regardless if they were graves of Northern or Southern martyrs in a time when the union was torn apart. The reunification of the severed parts began slowly and there is still today resentment of the "War Between the States and Against Yankee Aggression."  The Civil War was a war over secession first and secondarily to end the ugly practice of slavery.  Not only Negroes were enslaved from Africa but their offspring, begotten by White Slave owners on their female slaves were considered slaves. They were sold with others who were white but these were caught in the slavery of becoming bonds-people as a timed condition of work to bring them from their countries of origin to earn their place as Americans.  This may have worked for the bondsmen and women, but did not work for "black" persons. One had to have enough white to "pass" as a white. Enjoying this privilege has been extended in the Age of Obama. Our nation is still re-uniting, battling ideas of secession in many places.

The practice of decorating the graves as a sign of respect gave way to a day of memorializing ALL the dead American soldiers who died in succeeding wars.

Over the years of saving one day for decorating graves and making brave speeches about the dead who fought so we could live, Memorial Day has had its parades and speeches and gone through the motions appropriate to the time.  This is done in plenty of time to then trivialize the day by the sales in the stores which remain open hoping to survive by a great outpouring of grief in the form of money spent on "stuff" of which we have had enough since the rest of the year had its sales we could not resist. The merchants pant, waiting for us to buy.

Asking people to tell you what Memorial Day means to them is a school task given in classes of English.  The repetition of clichés is a must for what can anyone say about people we never knew who died so we might keep our system of government and our way of life?  Those families who had members who did die or serve their country in this way are few for it is not people against people who do the fighting but the young, eager to show their prowess with the knowledge of youth that they would live forever.

To me, Memorial Day, means a day of refection about those who did not come back when I was lucky to have survived and I did come back.