Memorial Day Poppies: Reminder Of Lives and Community Lost To War

The vivid red of last year’s crêpe paper poppy is long gone though it still hangs from the rearview mirror of my car, a faded daily reminder of lost lives and passing time.  Both irreplaceable.

Closed poppies seem a particularly àpropos symbol of the millions of lives that never reached full bloom due to war and the contributions those lives could have made to our world that will never be fully realized.

On Saturday, Poppy Day, I made a donation to The American Legion Auxiliary to contribute to the financial assistance of disabled and hospitalized veterans and received two hand-made poppies to help raise awareness, education and respect for veterans.

Last year, The Poppy Program distributed nearly 3.5 million poppies and raised $2.1 million.   The poppy program began in 1922, following WWI, through the efforts of Moina Michael and was inspired by a war poem written by Lt. Col. John McCrae in 1915, “In Flanders Fields” (excerpt):

...In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

Moina Michael wrote a stirring response to McCrae’s poem (excerpt):

. . . the blood of heroes never dies
But lends a luster to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders' Fields.