The Women Who Keep the Dead Alive

Memorial Day arrives each year with its familiar national choreography: flags placed in rows, folded lawn chairs, highway traffic, sales advertisements, family cookouts, social posts thanking the fallen, and the annual declaration that summer has unofficially begun. Publicly, it is a day of remembrance. In practice, remembrance is often brief, ceremonial, and quickly absorbed into leisure. We nod toward the dead and then continue moving.