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Buried stories.

The most famous cemetery in North America houses some 300,000 human remains of presidents, government officials, soldiers and their spouses, all in the front yard of Robert E. Lee’s mansion (it was a overt gesture of blame by the North). I was there today, burying the wife of a WWII veteran. The photo shows the Army honor guard taking the casket out of the hearse and to the grave. This was the sixth time I’ve been involved with a burial at Arlington and it involved the least pomp. No gun salute. No caisson. No folding of the flag. No tears from the family.

The cemetery was founded after the Civil War, a reminder of the lose of war. And ironically, if all the war stories were recorded that are buried in the graves of Arlington, it might be enough to forestall any meditations of future wars. But those stories … those warnings, those horrors, those difficulties, those darkest hours of the human soul, and heroic sacrifices … are forever lost like the minds that once held them. Underneath the hallowed grounds of Arlington lie the dead, imbued by the mystery of stories “better left unsaid.” Buried stories, untold truths, mysteries forever, in graves they lay.

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