After the War (Gross & Keele)

This piece brings us to the aftermath of conflict as a call for reflection. It is most moving and emotionally draining. It can be heard as a song between a woman and her lover/husband, but can also be a dialogue between a mother and a son, a father and a son, etc. As a frequenter of many wakes, I realized in my twenties that as a child born after 1980 my perception of veterans was a bit skewed compared to older generations; to me (as a kid), a veteran was an old, wrinkly, grey person from the Legion who wore a suit jacket, medals, and shiny shoes. It wasn’t until I worked in funeral homes that I realized that it was young, handsome, wide-eyed men in uniform, that we often saw in picture frames beside caskets and urns, that were the original casualties of the great world wars; the massive cemeteries across Europe are filled with the young – not the old. When I read the lyrics, “my love, please forgive me, I never planned to die” I think of a client I sat with who told me stories of lying about his age to get into the Navy and all the debauchery these young teenagers got up to in the North Atlantic Ocean. It would seem that dying was never on the radar because they hadn’t yet reached an age where they could realize their own mortality.