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June 23, 2004Ceremonial bugles, back in the news...
One of Yahoo!'s homepage main news headlines is for an article about ceremonial bugles--a device that, frittered into a bugle and discreetly activated, will play digital rendition of "Taps" for military funerals for which no honest-to-goodness bugler could be found. This caught my attention, as it was an invention I discussed in my blog back on September 5th of 2003.
It's an AP article, but my hometown managed to get mentioned:
"It's the closest and next best thing to the real thing," said Mark Maynard, director of the Riverside National Cemetery in California, where a few of the Iraq casualties have been buried. "A bone of contention with veterans organizations and families was just the sound and tackiness of the military carrying boom boxes to play taps."
Riverside National Cemetery is, interestingly enough, the cemetery at which my father was buried back in December of 1992. While I'm no great fan of the ceremonial bugle, I will agree with Maynard that "Taps" via a boombox is tacky as all hell. At my father's funeral, it pushed an already surreal event--for "surreal" is the only word to describe watching a box containing your father's ashes being placed in the ground when you're the tender age of 14--into the domain of the darkly absurd. One wonders if "Insane in the Membrane" will play as the encore, or if it would be appropriate to toss down a piece of cardboard and start breakdancing.
Of course, the priest's book of prayers with variables flagged in bright red ink with the appropriate choices (a la "Lord, let [deceased's name] know the comfort of your love, and cradle [his/her] soul to Your bosom...") didn't help any, either...
Posted by patrick at June 23, 2004 04:20 AM
CommentsI was around that age when I lost my grandfather. Emotionally, I held everything together pretty well. I knew he was terminally-ill, and had been so for a while, so it's an event I knew was coming. I wasn't hit hard by that impact of loosing a loved one until my grandmother passed away, about a year later. She was my last grandparent (on my dad's side anyway), not to mention my family's not all that big in the first place, so I kind of broke-down. What made matters worse was the way she went. She had what I've come to refer to as a 'Triple Threat'--Alzheimer's, lung cancer, and the other lung collapsed. I guess the only good news is that the doctor had her loaded up on so much morphine that she wasn't in any pain. Not such a bad way to go when you look at it that way, I suppose...
Posted by: Steph at June 23, 2004 01:47 PM
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