Half-Mast Again

There is our beautiful flag, draped down, hanging low, hanging at half-mast again. So many lives remembered, so often now, American soldiers, Virginia Tech students gunned down, so frequently our flag drapes in sorrow each week. And so it should be, we should be reminded daily of the pain and despair others are facing when they receive a phone call or a visit telling them that their lives have been changed forever, altered in a way this side of heaven can not be changed, one they loved is no more on this earth. I remember the day I first saw a flag draped at half-mast. I was small and young, only five. We lived in Sioux City, Iowa and it was cold, it was winter, it was November 22, 1963 and I walked out of the school building early afternoon just like I did everyday. But this day was somehow eerily different. Outside it was quiet, not noisy like a regular playground, and the flag looked all "funny." I stopped an upperclassman, a second grader, and asked "what's wrong with the flag?" "It is called "half-mast" this smart elementary grader replied, "because the President's dead." What? What did all of this mean? I hurried home to Mama where she was silent with tears streaming down her face. She pointed to the black and white television where pictures of Dallas. Texas and reporters and people being interviewed all spelled darkness. It was a dark day in America; it was a dark day in Sioux City, Iown; it was a dark day in our home and millions others. Today, as I pulled away from the high school where my son attends in this small county in Georgia and I passed the local fire station, there it is again, the flag draped down low to honor those who have given their lives this week in service or through evil; it takes me back to that "other" day of sorrow, realizing that today's pain is just as real for each family feeling it, facing it and burying it. May God bless and comfort those who mourn, He is the only One who truly can.