with or without the dogs is more my style for coping with life and death, preferably cerebral rather than what I used to call "juvenile" but --because Favorite Daughter's humor is in fact from a teen but far from juvenile--now merely call "bathroom" humor.

So for the antiwar sensibility, my own protesting would be more Catch 22 or M*A*S*H, power of story with some cathartic laughs. I guess it runs in the family?

Although my dad was a Korean Conflict veteran and retired Air Force Colonel . . . I cracked silly jokes after his funeral that had my little sister helplessly laughing for hours, at a Cracker Barrel appropriately enough--puns aren't that ha-ha funny but at least they ARE cerebral.
And he was definitely never about public displays of emotion, through protesting or even having a birthday party. He was deferential to others, circumspect, fastidious and quite the courtly officer and gentleman both in public and private. I don't usually memorialize him in that role on Memorial Day (or any other time) but now y'all have me connecting it, kinda wishing I could hear him marvel at all-grown-up Favorite Daughter's good-humored (but hardly fastidious!) way of seeing and coping with the world . . .