Best I could do. Couldn’t find my flag.
My father died on this day in 1997. On the Fourth of July. Does that spoil the holiday for me? Not exactly. I’ll just say it’s complicated.
It wasn’t always. July Fourth was a time to reminisce about Dad, who one of the most patriotic people I ever knew. He was literally buried in a casket with a flag under the lid.
He was a soldier musician – a clarinetist in the National Guard band with a sharpshooter medal .
Independence Day was his holiday.
He liked to celebrate with fireworks, as did I. Mom would send him out to stop us kids from blowing each other up and next thing you knew he’d be tossing them in the air, saying “here’s how you do it.”
He grew up playing with cherry bombs, which can totally blow your hand off, so Black Cats and pennyrockets didn’t faze him in the slightest.
I inherited that from him. I’d be in a firecracker war right now if I could.
But now on the Fourth I just wonder what Dad would make of America if he was still around. I’m kind of glad he didn’t live to see it now.
I used to see myself as a patriot and I guess I still do. I was in Boy Scouts. I learned how to raise and lower the flag, how to fold it, how to display it.
These days I don’t think much about the flag unless I see it in public. I have one in the house somewhere, but I can’t find it.
I know how I used to feel about the American flag, but how am I supposed to feel now that I’ve seen it carried next to Nazi flags and Confederate Battle Flags? Now that I’ve seen someone beaten nearly to death with one on TV?
Now I’m kind of afraid to display the flag. I have to wonder what it will say about me to others who saw those same images. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way.
Late Boomer's Den 
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