President Joe Biden on Monday said his grief for his late son Beau Biden gives him insight into pain felt by parents and family of deceased US service members, as he commemorated the nation’s honoured dead the day before the eighth anniversary of his son’s death from brain cancer.
Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery just feet from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where unidentified servicemen from the Korean War and both the First and Second World War are guarded by US Army sentries, Mr Biden urged Americans to “never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy” by “those who died so our nation might live”.
He noted that each of the “flags, flowers, and marble markers” at Arlington represents “a mother, a father, a son a daughter, a sister, a spouse, a friend” and “an American” whose loss may still be grieved by loved ones, even many years later.
“Every year we remember and every year it never gets easier,” he said.
Addressing America’s Gold Star families — those who’ve lost a family member in military service — Mr Biden said he knows how painful Memorial Day can be for them each year because it “can reopen ... that black hole in the centre of your chest”.
“You feel like you're just sinking ... bringing you back to that exact moment you heard that knock on the door or the telephone ring, the exact moment you had to tell your children that mom or dad would not be coming home,” he said. “The hurt is still real — it's still raw”.
The president noted that 30 May will mark eight years since Beau Biden — his late firstborn son who served as Delaware’s attorney general as well as a Judge Advocate in the National Guard — passed away from brain cancer.
Mr Biden, who has often been criticised for suggesting that his son’s death stemmed from his service in Iraq despite the fact that Beau Biden’s time overseas saw him exposed to toxic burn pits which medical experts say can cause cancer, took care this time to say that his late son “did not perish on the battlefield”.
While he told attendees at the Arlington ceremony that Beau’s death and those of soldiers who lost their lives in combat were “not the same,” he said the pain of his loss is still “particularly sharp” on Memorial Day each year.
He also said his late son, who held the rank of Major in the Delaware Army National Guard, lived by the same code as “all those you lost lived by”.
“It’s the creed that millions of service members have followed, from the fields of Yorktown, to the shores of Normandy, to the rice paddies of Khe Sanh, to the valleys of Kandahar”.
“Throughout history these women and men laid down their lives. Not for a place or a person or a president, but for an idea unlike any other idea in all of human history — the idea of the United States of America,” he said.
He said the “sanctuary” of Arlington “honours that sacrifice and tells their stories, and in turn tells our story, the American story ... a story of the patriots who died to deliver a nation where everyone is entitled to certain unalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness”.
“Each of them is a link in a chain of honour that stretches back to our founding fathers,” he added.
