It is a holiday born of necessity. In contemporary America, we think of the last Monday of May, Memorial Day, as the official start of summer with picnics, trips to the lake, and the launch of political campaigns. Our cemeteries are decorated with flags and a few families take time to visit the graves of loved ones and decorate them with flowers. The passage of many years has dulled the intensity of the pain from which the day originated.

The Civil War left the nation battered and grieving. The single bloodiest military conflict in American history left 600,000 to 800,000 human bodies that needed to be buried. It affected millions of families who had the personal grief of the loss of a loved one. The numbers are huge and they are not precise. In addition to those who died in the heat and confusion of battle, their bodies torn by bullets, many more died after having survived the battle, succumbing to infection that doctors had not yet learned to cure effectively. Still others died of spreading disease and contagion and even exposure living in hastily erected camps for prisoners of war.

From the massiveness of the collective grief of so many people, there was a need for a holiday to remember, to grieve, and to honor those who had fallen. Despite the deep pain of loss, those who had survived knew the need to remember if only for the reason that such a terrible event might be prevented in the future. The simple urge to not forget, but to remember cried out for a national holiday.

The national holiday, however, took many, many years to emerge. Observed in many different communities with many different traditions, some national unity emerged. Shortly after the Civil War, General John A. Logan, head of a group of northern wear veterans, called for a national day of remembrance. He chose May 30 for the day because it was not the date of any specific battle. That year, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, itself established to provide a resting place for 20,000 Civil War soldiers. By 1890 Decoration Day was an official state holiday in all of the Northern States. Different dates for honoring the dead continued in the south until after World War 1.

That great war added a layer of grief to the national psyche. The holiday evolved. Subsequent wars, including World War II, The Korean War, The War in Vietnam, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan added layer upon layer of grief.

More than a century after the Civil War, the national Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May, creating a three-day weekend for many employees. That change went into effect in 1971 and established Memorial Day as a national holiday.

The passage of so many years and the layering of so much grief obscured the history of the original commemorations. In 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York to be the official birthplace of Memorial Day. Historians now believe that Waterloo’s first observance on May 5, 1966, was not, however, the earliest observance of the holiday.

In the late stages of the Civil War, the Confederate army transformed a formerly posh country club, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into a makeshift prison for Union captives. More than 260 Union soldiers died from disease and exposure while being held in the open air infield of the racecourse. Their bodies were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstands.

When Charleston fell and the Confederate troops evacuated, freed slaves remained behind. One of the first things those freed slaves did was to exhume the mass grave and renter the bodies in a new cemetery. It had a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” Then something remarkable happened. Reported both in The New York Tribune and the Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves along with a few white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track. As many as 3,000 children carried bouquets of flowers. Ministers recited verses from the Bible. The date was may 1, 1865, a year before the Waterloo observance.

Layers of grief have left layers of stories and not every memory is the same. The passage of time has left us without any first generation witnesses, but it is clear that the national day emerged from the grief of many for the deaths of loved ones in war. It is also clear that from the beginning ministers sought to walk with others who grieved and to bring meaning from the deep loss and sadness. A national holiday is distinct from a religious holiday. Nonetheless, religion has been a part of the national observance from the beginning. Sharing grief is always a religious experience.

A short walk from our home is the community cemetery in Mount Vernon. Our newly adopted town was not organized when the Civil War occurred. The town was first platted in 1877 after Harrison Clotheir purchased 5 acres from Jasper Gates for $100 to establish a town site. Gates was among the earliest recorded settlers, who arrived in 1870. At that time enormous log jams blocked the Skagit River near here and blocked navigation further upstream. The low-lying area was not chosen as a dwelling place by the indigenous people, but the often-flooded lowlands offered rich soil for many crops and was desired by settlers.

Still, on this Memorial Day, our cemetery is decorated with avenues of flags. There is a small section of the cemetery with military markers, where those who died in World War I and subsequent wars are buried. A few miles farther north, at the Enterprise Cemetery near our son’s farm the avenue of US flags sports a single Canadian flag commemorating the presence of Canadian war veterans whose families’ farms spanned the border.

Today we will remember. And grieve a bit more. So much has been lost to the ravages of war. So high a price has been paid before our time. And we will pray. It is what ministers have always done in the face of grief. Long before the wars of our country we discovered that death is not the final word on the condition of the human spirit. For that we thank God.