Memorial Day, 2013.  Alone with her two year old son, Jessica Mitford moves quietly through the cemetery.  Arlington Cemetery, which at 624 acres is one of America’s largest, is a study in valor and pain, a portrait of bravery, solace, and privation, the nation’s most revered place for the final earthly repose of those who have served in the five branches of America’s military.  For many, it is sacred ground, a hallowed site, one on which those who visit it tread with enormous respect and care.

     On this Memorial Day of 2013, Ms. Mitford had come to visit the grave of her husband, killed in Afghanistan in 2012.  She held up her son, a two year old boy named Evan, and talked to him about his father, the father he will, heartbreakingly, never know.  She wanted Evan to know about his father.  She wanted him to be aware of who his father was and what his father did.  She wanted to tell him that although his father was no longer with them, he would have given anything to be here and watch Evan grow up.

     Ms. Mitford wanted Evan to remember his father.  She wanted Evan to remember that were it not for his father he would not be here, that who he was today, and who he would become tomorrow are inseparably linked to this man at whose grave they now sit.  She wanted Evan to internalize the memory of a person who, though he would never meet him, is the person who would be one of the foundational determinants in creating the man he will one day be.  She wanted Evan to know that his memory of his father would be—should be—central to his future existence.  Don’t forget your father, she told him.* 

     We need to remember.  We need to remember our lost loved ones; we need to remember those we lose in wars; we need to remember those billions of people we will likely never meet.

     And though this may seem facile and silly to some, and patently obvious to others, we need most of all to remember God.  Why?  Without God, without an intentional cosmos, everything, absolutely everything means, in the big picture, absolutely nothing at all. Think about it.  We remember because we believe we and life have a point.  Yet if we have no real reason to suppose this universe should be here, what point is there to make?

     Memory is wonderful, yes, but memory only has significance in a remembered universe.

*  This account is based on an article about Ms. Mitford in The New York Times.