Memorial Day Remembered

It's early in the morning on Memorial Day and I am realizing just how close we were to having an intimate relationship with this day. It was close enough, causing the meaning of the holiday, to not have anything to do with discount sales of mattresses or DVD's.

A few years ago, Travis was in the Sand Box for the second tour. He lost some friends there, one of them he had trained and three weeks later, while on patrol, he was killed on the same route Travis' team had done dozens of times and would have still been doing if they stayed.

Three weeks, a hundred yards, a left turn instead of a right, a flat tire, a scout plane with a bad radio, a delay because of a phone call, a thousand other flukes that caused the seemingly random selection of men and women in harms way to be chosen to give up their lives-so the rest of us could live.

Some call it luck.

This day, as it starts on many accounts, all lead back to counting it as the start of summer. It is and always has been, one of the most holy days in the American way of life. I am very happy this day is not a more intimate day at our house. But it has to be something more than the start of summer or two for one sales. What should it look like? Do we want to walk with our heads lowered and stay inside and close the curtains? I asked my son if he wanted to go to the national cemetery, maybe finding his friends grave. He didn't even hesitate-'No,' he said.

I think its not because he didn't want to feel that pain, he didn't. Don't think anyone does, but there was an idea of these men and women who loved us so much, so purely, they might not have wanted us to hurt at their departure. When you love at that level these people have done, the idea focus of their lives is not one of pain, but joy. Pain was not the end, but the eradication of it.  That was their intent. They knew something when they stepped up. They wrote a big check. We need to honor that.

So, let me propose something. Today, Memorial Day 2014, we celebrate their lives. Each one, going back to those that lost it all in the Revolutionary War to Fallujah. We celebrate their love for us. We can still have and do all we want with family, on the beach, and grilling those brats, but stop and think, just for a moment. There is a National moment set aside at 3 in the afternoon where ever we are,  just for this, to remember those people that have loved us so much they gave up their lives. Call them by name, smile at their pictures, laugh at retelling of their bad jokes. That's what they want for us, they want us to celebrate with them. They want us to love, to learn to love sacrificially like they have learned and demonstrated. That's what this day's about-love.

The sweeping power of a love so strong, the world is changed by it.

Enjoy and pass this on.