We Who Are About To Die

 “Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant. We who are about to die, salute you.” Thus spoke the captives before they died in the games of the Romans.

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, which matters to teachers, and government officials, and those whose family are in the army. The soldiers I know are not the ones in the news for the military rape epidemic or for callous cruelty. They are men and women who salute freedom and loyalty and human dignity, and they head to war to fight for something in which they believe.

We who are about to die, salute you.

Of course we will honor them not nearly enough on our day off, with parades and picnics and half-off JC Penny sales. We will return the salute by continuing to live the lives they have safeguarded. And their purpose will echo through the years of our living.

We who are about to die, salute you.

There’s a power in those words. This afternoon, as I stared at the computer screen, they flitted unbidden across my mind. I watched the footage from this morning, of a 25-year-old girl being stabbed by an Islamic Jihadist at a bus stop outside Alon Shevut. I checked the condition of the young soldier (now dead) who had been stabbed in Tel Aviv, and frantically flitted to the BBC to find some other, happier, news, from another country. No go. Forty-eight children were killed today by a Jihadist suicide bomber in Nigeria.

We who are about to die, salute you.

Terrorist victims never say those words. The awful glory of a soldier doesn’t belong to them. The dignity of choosing country or love or God over life is never given to them. Instead, they leave a puddle of blood and a frightened emptiness from which no salute can ever draw the venom.

As I stayed after school, waiting for a student to finish her test, I stared at the image of the puddle of blood by the bus station in Alon Shevut. After, I drove straight to the Red Cross. A smiling woman pricked both my middle fingers and told me I’m iron deficient; eat a couple steaks and come back in a week. No, I wanted to tell her, I want to give right now. I want to add something to a world in which so much has been taken away. I’m not even teaching tomorrow; I’m not even adding to the sum of the world’s goodness by one jot on this Veteran’s Day.

As I drove home with the childish feeling of wanting to balance an unjust equation with puerile math, I remembered that we will all die. That there’s no reason not to live with the same intense purpose of a soldier heading into battle. After all, the same values, the loyalties, the honor that send him to his death, are the ones we live for. And that we can use to create a world in which nobody thinks it a good idea to kill themselves and others to get what they want, in which we're no longer in ancient Rome, cheering as humans tear apart other humans.

So. We who are about to live, salute you.