As We Prepare For Memorial Day Weekend
With Memorial Day Weekend ahead we will cease this blog until next week, but before we do, let’s stop and reflect for a moment on the day’s meaning.
Memorial Day is the day a grateful nation has set aside to honor and remember all those who wore a uniform for our nations freedom, and never came home.
That number is over one million of our fellow citizens, who never had the chance to live their lives and grow old.
They left home, never to return, leaving shattered, broken and empty hearts all around the lives they touched.
For the most part they were young, never married, never having the chance to experience all the joys of life we have enjoyed.
Their final resting places are over the globe, wherever duty called. Some lie in immaculate cemeteries in lands far away that grateful nations for their sacrifice keep.
Some were retuned to their homes for burials where their families could visit.
Some have been lost forever, their body locations known to only God.
Some we still find today through the magic of DNA.
Each month the defense department announces a few from WWII and Korea we have found and identified.
Memorial Day is the day we set aside to say thank you and remember and honor their sacrifice.
The Veterans Groups hand out poppies, the flower of the fallen.
For it was the red poppies that grew over the fallen gravesites in Flanders Fields in WWI.
So hang your flag, put one on your front lawn.
Drop a dollar or two in the Poppy bucket.
March in a parade.
Wear the colors and remember.
Honor those who never had the chance to do so.
They did it, so we could.
Let me close with this.
The other day I had a chance to speak at a Veterans Luncheon and I said this:
“A few weeks ago we celebrated Mother’s Day, honoring those who brought us into this world.
In a few weeks we will celebrate Father’s Day, and the Dads in our lives.
In between the two, we have Memorial Day.
A day we stop, honor and remember all those who never had the chance to be a Mom or Dad, because they gave their lives for our freedom.