We went to the Naskeag Cemetery yesterday, which we try to do each Memorial Day weekend.
As we entered, the blossoms of the crabapple tree to our left were starting to tumble onto the veteran’s flag and gravestone below the tree.
That stone was small, plain, and embedded flat into the grass; it probably was a government-issued gravestone. The stone didn’t say much about who was buried beneath it, but it said enough: it was Virgil N. Gray, an Army private from Maine during World War I who died at the age of 70 in 1961.
Thus, Virgil survived the war and died a civilian. Nonetheless, we have an expanded view of Memorial Day. We like to remember our war survivors as well as our fallen. (Brooklin, Maine)