Instructions for How to Remember the Dead

Memorial Day, Written from the Inside

They were brothers. They were sisters.
Not in blood, but in burden,
this message has been sent.
In folded flags, in dreams left unspoken,
and in the bugle’s last breath.

Do not set the alarm. Wake slowly.
Let the morning come without steel.

Let the light reach your face before the world does.
This is not a day for noise.

Do not rush the coffee.
Drink it hot, in a cup that remembers someone.
It is fine if the handle is chipped.
It is fine if it was theirs.

Say their full name.
Say it once, to the walls.
Say it again to the sink, the sky, the black-and-white photo near the bookshelf.
Speak it until it no longer sounds like absence.

Do not clean the grave too early.
Let the wildflowers say something first.

When you go, take no camera.
Take a cloth. A token. A story.

Do not rehearse what you will say.
Grief is not theater.
Memory does not perform.

If there is no grave, go anyway.
Find a body of water.
Speak to it.
It understands what it means to carry things that never return.

Wear what you wore when they last saw you, if it still fits.
Or something of theirs.
Or nothing special.
There is no uniform for mourning.

Sit on the ground.
Get your hands dirty.
We are meant to remember from the knees.

If a stranger is there, nod.
No small talk.
Today, all silence is sacred.

If you cry, do not apologize.
If you do not cry, do not apologize.

If you brought flowers, don’t arrange them.
Let them fall how they fall.
The wind knows where to place things.

Read something out loud
a letter, a poem, a prayer from when you still believed.
Even if your voice breaks, keep reading.
The dead are patient listeners.

Leave something behind.
Something simple. Something true.
A shell. A medal. A folded piece of paper with a stupid joke scrawled in blue ink.
They want what is real, not what is polished.

If they were funny, laugh.
If they were furious, curse the sky on their behalf.
If they were complicated, 
thank God. Love should not come easy.

Do not make them a saint if they were not.
Do not make them a symbol if they were someone’s everything.

Touch the token.
Or the photograph.
Or the surface of the water.
Say, you mattered.
Say, you are not erased.
Say, we carry you, still.

When you rise, do not brush off your knees too quickly.
Let the earth cling to you a little while longer.

On the way home, take the long road.
Turn off the radio.
Roll down the window.

Let this day change you.
Even a little.

Let the remembering cost something.
It should.