Well due to a teachers only day (I got out of it) and after a days river trip to Greenwich, Lucy and I found ourselves walking past Hyde Park Corner, the site of the New Zealand ANZAC memorial. The connection was made after spotting a few wreaths and checking the date on my watch. It was a special little pause in our day. Actually I felt a bit of moisture coming to my eye after scanning some distinct cast iron symbols of home. I will always remember walking past the war memorial on North Road in Dunedin. I would do it often, but every Saturday morning I would pause there for about a minute or two. His name (amongst others) was T. Aitken (Tom it turned out, not Tim), I was, and still am, significantly affected by this T. Aitken, no doubt a guy much like me, probably similar age, similar hopes and dreams, yet denied the chance to see them realised. "They died so that we may have life, let us make our lives worthy of their sacrifice" was the challenge posted beneath the list of the fallen. Just before I would leave I would always put my fingers on his name and make a little pledge to myself to live life like it was meant to be lived (always quietly and after a cautious look around to see if other folk were watching).
What do I feel so strongly enough about to make sacrifices for in my life? What would I give my life to? What would sacrifice entail in my life?
I think it's very right to remember those who paid the ultimate price, often for reasons not completely understood by them. This evening I'm going to make my own poppie and take it up.
1 comment:
Well Tim made us all poppy's and we took them and a flax flower to the New Zealand memorial that evening. I wrote a piece for the SA a few months ago and based it around the memorial. Here's some info about it. "It’s a beautiful piece of art work that speaks of the identity of twenty first century New Zealanders. Each of the sixteen bronze pillars or standards bears an emblem unique to that land and to the traditions of tangata whenua – the people of the land. There’s the iconic silver fern, a manaia figure taken from traditional Maori carving, and a reference to the nations prowess in the field of rugby.
Most significantly the positioning of the pillars helps to commemorate the military links between Aotearoa/New Zealand and Britain. “Their semi-grid formation calls to mind soldiers in procession and the forward lean of the standards gives them a defiant pose reminiscent of a shouldered rifle.”
[posted by the mother-in-law and not Lucy!]
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