by KLA2 » Fri Nov 09, 2007 1:08 am
November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada. I wrote this a number of years ago.
Remembrance Day Story
My grandfathers fought in the First World War and my father in the second. Fortunately they all came back home and suffered no debilitating injuries. I had never been touched personally by the horror of war. Remembrance Day therefore held no great emotional significance for me until one day in high school.
Mrs. S. was my grade 10 physics teacher. A brilliant scientist (she held a Ph.D. from MIT), sadly she was not a strong communicator. She would stand rigidly in front of the class, trying through her strong accent and stern manner to communicate concepts that were to her child’s play, to a group of students who were interested only in the latest Beatles song or what had happened at football practice. She was generally unpopular, a stern disciplinarian who handed out detentions swiftly and mercilessly and was notorious for enforcing the “no running” rule on the staircase.
November 11, I was in her class. At 11:00, the announcement came over the PA to stand at attention and observe a minute of silence. I stood with the rest of the class, bowed my head, and tried to imagine the sacrifice of people I had never known.
A whisper ran through the room.
Mrs. S., this woman of iron and ice, was crying. Standing alone at the front of the room, tears she made no attempt to hide or wipe away flowed down her cheeks. We stood amazed.
Later, I learned that she had lost a brother, other relatives and friends in WW2. The horror had reached out and touched her personally. She remembered and felt what I could not.
Every Remembrance Day, I think back on that day, and weep a little with Mrs. S. I think of the horror, the pointlessness and the waste of war. Most of all, I think of the pain it has caused for so many.
Oh, yes. Did I fail to mention the nationality that gave Mrs. S. that strong accent?
It doesn’t matter, does it.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche