Reflections on Anniversaries of the Dead

An anniversary of events feels like an electromagnetic shadow - a chalk outline around the souls of those haunting it.

There is a faint, white noise type hum in the background of everything we do during these dates and our lives hum with the life force of those who have gone “beyond the veil,” without us…like a whisper we thought we heard or the fleeting vision of someone dashing past us just out of the corner of our eye.

It is almost as if the dead live again and bring to us the lessons they wished they had learned when they had “their turn.” 

I really feel that.  It is like walking too close to a highly charged power line or an electric fence or static electricity…the almost imperceptible energy that raises the hairs on your arms.  I hear or read the stories of dead Great War soldiers and I feel them all around me.  It is impossible not to.  And, really, there is an obligation to tune into those voices, feelings, words.  No one yet lives who walked those battle fields or floors of homes.  No one yet lives who signed the papers and sent to the killing fields of Flanders the blossoms of youth and a generation of artists, poets, painters, and politicians; farmers, bankers, and teachers;  fathers, sons, and brothers; mothers, daughters, and sisters – the likes of whom we have not seen since.

The sacrifice was much too dear, the price far too high, and if you look at Gaza, the Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa – any where – you will see that we did not learn anything from that sacrifice.  In fact, a mere twenty years after the cessation of the hostilities in France and Belgium, the world was at it again with many of the same key players.

A complete slap in the face of those young men who believed what they were told:  that they were fighting the war to end all wars.

I cannot imagine, in anyway, what it must have been like for the fathers, veterans of the Great War, to send their sons onto the battle fields of the next war knowing what they knew about what war was really like; a knowledge they, themselves, did not have when they were 20 year men signing up and heading out to Flanders. 

I cannot imagine how they dealt with the memory of their war while hearing in the news the details of the war their sons fought.  Those six years must have been a continual flash back for them – with no way of easing the horrors that probably revisited them in fits and starts…so much worse than they did in the years immediately following their war during which time they forced all of the images and pain deeper and deeper down.

I believe that those of us who survive significant trauma have a line to, are “plugged into,” others who have suffered, like there is an “energy signature” sent out by our brains.  It’s like our brains register that frequency because we are “tuned into” that frequency based on the fact that our individual trauma has “tuned” our brains into the “trauma frequency.” And because energy is never-ending, the energies of trauma remain always – sort of “floating” around for anyone to “tune into.”

As I have said, anniversary dates amplify that “frequency,” I think, making it easier to tune into those who lived the events which scarred them.  The larger the numbers of people affected, the more powerful the frequency.  So then, is it any wonder those souls walk again, with more clarity than before, a century after their horrific deaths?  In addition, those who engage in acts of remembrance are focusing their attention to those who have passed, lending even more energy to their “frequency.”

Maybe that is why on anniversaries of death, we feel a more profound connection to those we have lost than during any other time.  There seems to be a lead up and then on the day, there is a strong surge and we dream about them or hear “their song” or smell a smell that reminds us of them.  We are “plugged into” them.  I have had this experience several times in my life.  Sometimes I was comforted by the connection, sometimes I was puzzled, sometimes I was scared, and sometimes I was made even sadder – missing them all the more.

As I said yesterday in my intro to yesterdays post, the ghosts have started to whisper.  This doesn't mean I need a trip to the psychiatrist’s office.  I have been sensitive to this since childhood.  What it does mean is that I need to listen and record the whispers to give voice to the murmurs of the dead.

I am both excited and terrified for the day, in the not too distant future, when I walk those still scarred fields of Flanders – so full of shadows those fields will be.  I will be a divining rod for screaming souls.

The First Gas Attack  by William Roberts

These next four years are going to be beautiful and sad for me and others like me…those whose frequencies are “tuned” to the suffering we have shared with others.  For those who have family members who died in the Great War, I am sure the familial blood will sing to you to tell the stories of your warriors - be they soldier or healer. 

For those who are sensitive to these things this is an honour and a burden, both.  And, yet, for me, I would not trade it for a life lived in silence – muted to those whispers. 

We hear you beloved “mouthless dead.”

I hear you.