A Flag Draped Casket

Didn’t watch the funeral today, but knowing it was in progress brought back memories of a flag draped casket. 

My uncle was at Pearl Harbor and my father’s Company M, 128th 'Red Arrow' Infantry, 32D followed. His was one of the first two companies in WW2 to be airborne into combat (The Papuan Campaign and The Battle of Buna) ─ before there was a U.S. Air Force. 

Almost every day driving home from work, I called him ─ beside my wife he was my very best friend. Our conversations continued for well over a decade until the challenges of his 93-year old body decided otherwise. 

As I stood by the wind-swept flag draped casket, that overcast January day, the honor guard fired a deafening salute and spent shell-casings fell into the dust. He once had played the trumpet – but now there were none to play for him. 

Then as the flag was removed and tri-folded ─ the realization that he was no longer of any earthly consequence to those that ”dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth.” 

And as the officer presented the flag ─ my body and soul convulsed with a hideous “un-earthly” groan. 

Yet, will I ever remember the hope he often recalled in my presence: “That blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”:

 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).