After the chapel service, we brought up the rear of the funeral procession to proceed from the Old Post Chapel into Arlington Cemetery.
Our path would take us from Ft Myer all the way to near the main entrance to the cemetery…about a mile and a half.
The band led the procession followed by the honour guard (including the rifle team), the chaplain (by herself), the Officer in Charge on the lead horse, the horse-drawn caisson, and the casket team. I had wondered how they were going to handle Dad’s urn on that big wagon…as it turns out, there’s a casket with a drawer at the end of it where the urn and the flag were placed for the trip into the cemetery (with the flag always being on the right).
About halfway through this journey, we passed to the north of the Tomb of the Unknown and it was such a stunning sight to see everyone on the sidewalk watching the procession making the left turn to head down the hill. Every eye, every camera…everyone was focused on that caisson and I couldn’t help but be proud of my fellow citizens paying their respects during his final journey.
But what was truly striking was the silence where the only thing you could hear was the horse’s hooves clopping on the pavement all the way to McClellan Gate. And even that was muted so that you could have imagined hearing the proverbial pin drop if you wanted to!
A perfect moment of quiet solitude for meditation surrounded by hundreds of people on either side of the road within sight of the Tomb of the Unknown.
He didn’t have many accolades for his service whilst he was alive but it was beautiful that he had them when they truly counted and my father became part of many people’s history that day. That is a gift I will never forget.
As we made our way through the cemetery, you couldn’t help but be awestruck by the many thousands of headstones arranged perfectly in rows upon rows. Such perfection in our nation’s most hallowed ground is comforting knowing our family will have one of our own in this beautiful place.
