[This is a slightly edited version of Mullings first written for Memorial Day, 2001.]

We went to Arlington National Cemetery to attend the annual Memorial Day observance. The Lad, in charge of the President's appearance, graciously offered us seats in the Amphitheater to watch.

The entrance to Arlington National Cemetery is directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial. These two historical - mystical - sites are connected by the Memorial Bridge.

At the entrance there is a sign which asks visitors to keep in mind the true nature of this place:

The Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and I made our way up and down the curving walkways, past the small groups of school-aged children and their chaperones listening to docents explain what they were looking at.

They were looking at rows and rows of American flags which had been placed in the ground in front of each and every headstone. There are over a quarter of a million heroes buried at Arlington.

Generals and privates. Admirals and seamen.

Each headstone gets its own flag.

Each flag, the same size.

Each life, the equal of every other.

We walked the grounds, map in hand, grass wet from days of thunder storms, the morning still cloudy and threatening. Having found what we were looking for, we paused and reflected.

At the Amphitheater, The Lad led us to our seats. We each took one of the small American flags which were being handed out by elderly vets and read the inscription above the stage:

On cue, the Air Force Band and Chorus began to perform. On cue, the sun peeked out.

We listened to the 21-gun salute signaling the arrival of the President on the grounds: Off in the distance, there was an order followed by the report of a cannon, then another order, another report. Twenty-one times.

During it all, the crowd stood silently.

At the playing of the National Anthem, the military personnel snapped a salute and everyone else put hands on hearts.

The President placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns which is located to the rear of the Amphitheater on a large, elevated deck, out of our sight.

While the wreath was placed, we could hear, very faintly, the sound of taps.

The crowd was hardly breathing; as if breathing, alone, might drown out the sound of the bugle.

The President arrived on the stage without Ruffles and Flourishes. Mrs. Bush took her seat, without fanfare.

After the opening prayer, there was a recitation of letters written by young men fighting in different wars, in different eras, in different places. When it was completed, there was no applause. The crowd was silent.

This was not a ceremony of pomp and circumstance, nor an occasion for soaring rhetoric.

The President spoke, quietly, of sacrifice, and of duty, and of honor. He spoke of young men and young women who would never live out their lives. He spoke of the last kiss between a husband and his wife; the last wink and wisecrack of a brother to a sister as a train pulled out of a station; a father and son hugging for a final time at an airport.

Afterward, we stood at the Tomb of the Unknowns to watch the Changing of the Guard; the silent military ballet which takes place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day, has nothing to do with the sweep and grandeur of history, nor the gigantic commitment of resources to battles and wars; nor grand strategies and brilliant tactics.

It is the place where - and the day when - we remember the individual men and women who were killed at Bull Run, and Belleau-Wood, at Pearl Harbor, and on Omaha Beach, and in Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and all the other un-locatable places with unpronounceable names where we have sent young men and women to fight and, too often, to die.

Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day, has everything to do with a single white headstone nestled in a neat row among all the other white headstones next to it, in front of it, and behind it. Up hills and down swales.

It stands, along with the others, in silent acceptance of a nation's gratitude.

We had paused at one white headstone. One among a quarter of a million. The one with the words:

Flags in hand, in the wet grass, on a gray morning, of Memorial Day, at Arlington National Cemetery, we once again paid our respects to her dad.

And prayed, silently, that he rest.

In peace.