Just Writing Through: May 2019

Memorial Day is a day that brings with it the sorrowful knowledge that sacrifice is not just a word that can be thrown about lightly. Sacrifice is a part of the fabric of all of our lives, and those who serve our country know the gravity of this sacrifice.

They live it daily. It is woven into relationships, covered by unconditional love, and carefully threaded throughout marriages, children and jobs.

The cost of our freedom is great, and on Memorial Day we remember the greatest cost – the loss of life, the loss of people who loved the freedoms provided by our country more than life itself, and the loss of those individuals who have given their lives for that cost of freedom.

Recently I met a man who shared the great loss of life his unit endured – the men he called his brothers – men who died making the world a better place. He shared it because he knows the pain of war – he knows the invisible wounds of war that touch every aspect of his life. And he wants others to know they are not alone in wrestling with those invisible wounds.

Military loss winds its way through paths less traveled and often down major thoroughfares. Mothers and fathers lose sons and daughters, children loose mothers and fathers, siblings lose the ones who know them the most, grandparents lose grandchildren, children lose aunts, uncles, cousins… people lose friends. The loss runs deep and never can be forgotten. It only grows deeper roots, embedding itself silently, yet no less powerfully.

But on Memorial Day, there is public recognition of that sacrifice.

Woodstock honors that sacrifice by displaying the stories of servicemen and -women through uniforms, memorabilia, photos and other sentimental objects. A great many represented are still living, and some have passed – though not always in service. One man from Woodstock, Dennis Jahn, was killed in Vietnam. The Gold Star plaque presented to his family 15 years ago by the local chapter of VietNow is in Warp Corp this year along with photographs and memories of his life, cut tragically short by war. It is, however, with memorials such as these, that his family can keep his name alive.

And while veterans will tell you time and time again that Memorial Day is not about them, I believe so much of it is. They are the ones who return without their brother- or sister-in-arms. They are the ones who endure Post-traumatic stress syndrome – whose lives were shattered overseas and whose shards have come together, whole, but not without scars. They are the ones who wrestle with coming home. They are the ones who come home with a new mission – to keep alive the memories of those who never made it home. They struggle daily with situations we often take for granted. Their families see their pain, their sorrow, their angst, and they live their days wondering how to help.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that we lose 20 U.S. Veterans a day to suicide, and the loss is staggering. These men and women might not have been lost on a mission, but they have been lost in a battle of their own. It is a day to remember those losses, too.

Pray for the families, pray for those lost … and pray for those veterans who live each day in a body or with a mind they don’t recognize.

Remember the sacrifice, honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and then, reach out to those who remain.

Gold Star son, Christian, looking at an image of himself, placing a Marine Corp cover on his father's tombstone in Arlington. I have nothing but admiration for his mother, and I cannot imagine how hard this day is.