By Dave Stancliff
Who will you remember on this Memorial Day?
Your Father? Your Mother? Son or daughter? Aunt or Uncle? Grandfather? Or perhaps a cousin? How many of you had family members die in the military service?
Do you remember their smiles? Or the way they became special to you? Their humor? Their dreams? Their loving embrace? The softness of their touch? Or, when they use to take you fishing? All gone now. Just ghosts wearing uniforms.
Memorial Day has been set aside as a national day to remember those who served our country and who are not with us now. They come from generations past when Great-great-grandfather Lucius died fighting in the Civil War, and when your uncle Roger died in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Memories of loved ones fighting and dying during WW I and WWII. Family albums keep your veterans enshrined. The older photos brown with age and sepia tones give you a glimpse into your family’s history. Uncles with medals, that you will never know, smile uncertainly from beneath helmets.
How fresh is this day to you? Have you recently lost a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan? Did your twin brother die in a place you cannot pronounce? Do you pull out that photo of your mother when she left for her second tour in Iraq and never came back on Memorial Day?
The veterans from WWI are nearly gone now. WW II and Korean veterans are not far behind. Vietnam veteran’s numbers decrease every day. Young men and women still die fighting wars they don’t understand. Their memories still fresh in the 6:00 o’clock news.
Drape American flags from your house in honor of those who died serving their country. Go to the cemeteries and leave little flags there. Have parades and let there be kind words said. Gather in honor of those in your family, and in the nation, who wore uniforms and are no longer here. Gather for those that still wear uniforms, and hold them dear.
Take a moment and remember those loved ones and strangers that died defending this country. They died with your family members and they all became one. We all have someone that was a veteran once, even if it was in generations past. We are all Americans.
We are all a family in the name of freedom. We all believe in our right to say whatever we will. We have fought wars to defend all the rights we hold dear today. So when we have a special day set aside to recall those veterans who are no longer here, we owe it to ourselves to support their memory in some way.
You don’t have to join a parade. You don’t have to do anything to show people you care. But hopefully somewhere in your heart you will wish them well. Hopefully, you will understand that they all died, either during service to their country or years later, as heros.
Don’t let fashionable protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mar this Memorial Day. We gained our independence through their blood. We hold our freedoms today through their blood. Don’t judge them politically to pursue some negative agenda.
Let Memorial Day be a day of peace. Don’t play games with the dead. It’s a day to honor sacrifices. Don’t dirty their memories with your thoughtless words. Dust off that old photo of Grandfather in his funny saucer-like helmet and those leg wrappings.
Tell your son and daughter what a great guy he was. Smile and tell them a story. Make sure your grandson knows his dad was a good soldier and father. Keep the good memories alive. It’s a day when we recognize that freedom doesn’t come cheap. We honor those who paid the ultimate price without judging them. As a nation we honor their memory.
As It Stands, we owe our veterans much more than one day of recognition.
image via Google Images
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