Memorial Day’s name seems a bit ambiguous compared with its more precise object. To memorialize means to preserve the memory of or to commemorate. We do that with all sorts of persons and events. The monuments and statues around Washington, D.C., and across the country memorialize. Funerals do so as well for the dearly departed. Nearly any holiday, sacred or secular, calls on us to reverently recall.
On Memorial Day, though, we do not set aside a time generically for remembering, leaving the…