Remembered in Life

Editor’s Note: Post originally published on 12/7/2015.  

here are solemn places located across the United States. Places with monuments that honor a special caliber of men and women and the way they chose to live. Though we remember these men and women in their deaths, it is what they did while they lived that we honor.

As a child, growing up on Oahu, Hawaii, I visited Pearl Harbor on a field trip. I do not know how old I was, but I was young enough that my head fit through the guard rails of the USS Arizona Memorial. I remember this because I poked my tow head through the rail and stared straight into the sunken wreckage of USS Arizona. I can still see the ribbons of leaking oil.

At the time, I was told that many US Navy sailors died there, their bodies still entombed in the murky waters of Wai Momi (Water of Pearl in Hawaiian). As a child, I didn’t understand death, and I certainly couldn’t understand what it meant to die in service to a country.

What I did understand, in a childlike way, and what has stayed with me all of these years, was the idea of life that the small ribbons spoke to me. The sunken ship could not be dead, because there was still something coming from it. I didn’t leave the memorial thinking about death, I left thinking about life.

So today, December 7, I read about and remember the lives of those who were on station Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

When they lived, 23 sets of brothers enlisted into the Navy together. When they lived, a father and son, Texans, Thomas Augusta Free and son William Thomas Free, each took an oath; for William the oath included “to observe and obey the orders of…officers set over me” and for Thomas “to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.” Brothers who lived and served together, a son who promised to follow and a father who promised to lead.

I remember an uncle who I only saw a handful of times. An uncle I loved and looked up to as a kid, who survived that day because he was stationed on another base just miles away.

The lives of those 23 sets of brothers, the father and son, and along with 2,338 other members of the Navy, Marines, Army, and civilians, all concluded on a Sunday morning, not far from where I grew up.

My uncle? He lived long enough for me to crawl into his lap. I still see him, sitting on a lawn chair in Tampa/St. Pete, Florida, next to a brick smoker full of Gulf Mullet. The flavor of that fish still lingers, so does his protective smile.

Uncle Waymen passed away right around the time I was sticking my head through the rails of the USS Arizona Memorial.

As a child, the ribbons of oil taught me about life. As an adult, the lives of those, we remember today, continue to teach me about life.

Today, celebrate their lives.