Remembrance Day

“Grief is the price we pay for love”

So, poppies. A parade of bewildered Brownies not too sure why they had to turn up to church this morning; flags and solemn hymns and the National Anthem.

We kept the two minutes’ silence and thought about those who died in old wars, and are still dying in current ones, and those who lived, traumatised or disabled….those who endlessly watched war films and carried on hating the Germans for ever, and those who like my Dad (shot down, PoW) and my Mum (Clydebank Blitz) locked it all away in their memories and never spoke of what they had been through.

We prayed for peace…put money in the charity box for injured service personnel and promised to do our bit to eradicate the curse of war.

But what about the other war? Those of us who have been all too close to the front line, have been wounded and damaged and seen our friends, patients and family members die, wonder how many have died, directly or indirectly, in the “war on drugs”. Many of those are actually former servicemen and women who cannot cope with the horrors they have experienced or adjust to civilian life, and turn to alcohol and drugs to kill the pain.

But the often repeated truism about war is that nobody ever actually wins. The war on drugs is no exception. It is not possible by main force to stop human beings from taking chemicals or to prevent such chemicals from being produced and manufactured. But today is not the day for debating drug policy or the morality of trying to blast the Afghan poppy fields to kingdom come.

Remembrance Sunday is about grief, the pain of loss, the waste and futility of war, hate and aggression, the longing for healing, reconciliation and peace. So let’s remember our friends who tried to fight their addiction and lost. Let’s think about the irony of poor and dispossessed people in developing countries trying to survive by producing opiates or cocaine to be consumed by poor and dispossessed people in our own cities.

Let’s mobilise our anger at the continued prejudice against addicts and their families, the vicarious stigmatisation of those who work with them, the hate-filled language of the tabloid press, the lack of understanding of professionals and politicians, the casual insults, the cultures of despair.

Let us feel intensely grateful that we have made it, are making it…have fought our addiction and won, have not put out families through the agony of bereavement and can contribute to the debate on how people get well.

Let us feel and express our grief for those who have died from suicide, accident, overdose or the medical consequences of their using, through violence or neglect by themselves or others. And let’s remember those “sober for ever” who were there when we staggered in, who gave us their advice and phone numbers and that knowing smile, and who have gone to speak at that Great Convention in the Sky…

We loved them all. We miss them all. We remember them…