I must also apologize to our friends and neighbors as it has been some time since my last post. Without going into detail, family issues have taken up much of my time, but with the help of GOD, things are returning to normal.
I realize that for many in our nation, Memorial Day weekend symbolizes the beginning of the summer. At long last, Bar-b-cues will be rolled out of sheds and garages and pool covers will take their place. The sound of children playing summer games late into the evening is a pleasant change to parents who have listened too long to the noises of Xboxes and Playstations.
Evening walks renew friendships with neighbors sitting on porches and lawns that have been ignored for much of the winter months.
All of this is a welcome sight and it brings with it a freedom that has eluded so many of us since October or November of last year.
To many Americans Memorial Day means so much more. Remembering a son or brother lost in battle in a land far away. A husband or father who has made the ultimate sacrifice, who has left a hole in the lives of those he or she loved to keep men and women they have never met safe and secure.
Arlington National Cemetery, The Vietnam War Memorial, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Gettysburg, Vickburg, Fredricksberg, Lexington, Concord, Bull Run, Iwo Jima, Corregidor, Guam and Manila, Korea, Sicily, Normandy, Bastogne, Tripoli, North Africa, the Trenches in France and Germany. The list of locations that Americans have given their best, their most, is long and sometimes filled with names of places we cannot pronounce let alone find on a map.
For us they have done things that should not be asked of any man but without their unselfish sacrifices and the sacrifices of their friends and families this thing we call freedom, this liberty we enjoy would be but a footnote in history books written by a dictator or other form of government whose sole purpose is to enslave and exploit the peoples they have conquered.
I am far from self-righteous and even further from heroic, I did not serve, I cannot hope to understand the feelings of those lucky to have returned from the battlefield, only to have left a buddy behind. I have friends and family who have served from WWII to Afghanistan and to a man they all find it difficult to talk of that part of their lives, they have all left friends on the battlefield, all have seen the tragedy of war and all know of sacrifice.
We do them as great an injustice as we do to those who have not returned if we trivialize their sacrifice with a hot dog or hamburger and forget a prayer or praise or just a plain, Thank You!
THANK YOU, Our fallen heroes, Our Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy, Thank You!
