No one immediately related to me has ever died in a war. As a matter of fact, none of my immediate relatives have even been in a war. A small few have been in the military, but not during war time. This doesn't mean Memorial Day has no meaning for me, but I certainly have no grave to go to on Monday to fly a small plastic American flag by. Memorial Day, because it is a national holiday that everyone (even my employers) observes, does give me a chance to thank my lucky stars that I haven't had to grieve a loved one shot down by those damn (insert appropriate ethnic slur here) over there.

Having a bias against a country because of a personal loss is understandable. There were a lot of people who lived through WWII who had to make the decision whether or not to buy a car made in Japan later in their lives. Most bought Fords or Chevys, even though they guzzle gas like a high school senior guzzles beer on graduation night. The fact that I've never owned a car made anywhere other than the U.S. speaks more for my mechanic than anything else.

So Memorial Day has a slightly different significance for me. It's a time to reflect on where I've come so far and where the summer and rest of the year is going to lead me to. Not that I just sit around and think about the course of my life all the time, but when a Monday holiday full of beer, burgers and baseball comes around, reassessment isn't such a bad thing. There certainly is time.

The pictures on my wall have started to fall again. A few years ago I started putting photo snapshots on the walls in my bedroom. I affixed them with that white sticky putty stuff that's kind of like silly putty except you can't copy the color comics with it--mainly you can stick things up on the wall. But when it starts to get really warm outside, thus heating the house in the process, the sticky stuff loses some of its affixing ability.

I stopped putting new pictures up over a year ago, opting rather to buy some cheap photo albums and start arranging them without the help of the white sticky stuff. But, surprising me a bit, I've only lost about a third of the photos from my wall due to the hot/cold nature of New Mexico weather. I thought my walls would be bare by now, but they're not even close.

The pictures falling off the wall is kind of like the turning of the leaves in fall. I watch all of those times someone found interesting enough to take a picture fall from the memory of the wall, only to be scanned in to the picture reservoir on my computer and then get returned to the stacks of pictures so they'll be put in a photo album someday. Like the blurry memories in my mind, these pictures will someday be gone from my permanent hard drive. But for now they flutter playfully like the burnt leaves in the Manzanos.

Last week, while I was in Golden, Colorado, on a business trip, my roommate set up a bookshelf in our living room to display our literary prowess. So, along with our video and CD collection, we can impress visitors with all these great works (only really significant novels are displayed to maximize our self importance) that one or both of us have read. Of course, there is the occasional selection we put out there to intimidate one of us into reading eventually.

Ulysses by James Joyce is the scariest of these.

Not only have I not been to war, but I haven't read Ulysses either. It's a dense jungle of prose that I've yet had the stomach to venture into.

On Memorial Day we celebrate the fallen war heroes of our country. Those people who sacrificed their lives so we could live ours however we see fit. And as the pictures fall slowly off the wall and that musty, close to forty year old copy of Ulysses calls to me, I have to say thanks. Because if there wasn't an element of true grit ingrained in the people of this country, we wouldn't be doing the things we are today. For good or for bad.

Sometimes, even as I spout my weekly paeans to free speech, I forget the role of the dead on the living. They keep us in check. Reminding us a couple things: life can be short, but it can also take forever. And somewhere down the road another sacrifice in the name of free living will be made. And I'm thankful, especially at this time of year, that it probably won't be me.

Matt Worley would love to think he'd be like the sharp-shooter in Saving Private Ryan, but has an inkling he'd be closer to the corporal who can't quite make it up the stairs to save his fellow soldier.