Skirling is the sound made by the bagpipe and it shall remain with me forever.
I am ever reminded of days in my old home town on Decoration Day, July 1st or Remembrance Day, as the Legion Band marched through the main street or piped plaintively at the base of the memorial to our war dead.
As a cub, then a scout, I marched with the men and women, wrapped in their thoughts and on the edge of tears always, as they moved slowly and deliberately through the act of remembrance.
We also shared their grieving, but knew little of the story of boys off fighting and dying in Europe and dead at twenty.
We so wanted to grieve but had no idea until we had grown, what this sacrifice was and what that ultimate price really meant.
Gone forever, but wait, recall them and look, they live again, however brief the candle. Oh God help and preserve us in this most testing time. We argue, we disagree, we come to blows and there it is, war again and again.
Where are the skilful diplomats whose words will bring us peace and ease? Why do we admire the dictator whose certainty seems to allay our fear with his certainty of who we should hate?
He is our enemy or is he as afraid as we are and postures magnificently, his silhouette like Il Duce? Then gone, not strung up in the town square by partisans, but disappeared to sulk, like Achilles, in Palm Beach.
It is the Pipes and Drums that mark out the time on all of this.
Here, now, always, we hear the Pipes and Drums and it marks our passage from yesterday, today and tomorrow.
René Hackstetter April 29, 2021
