Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day.  This was always a very big day in my hometown.  We had a parade and it covered all the area cemeteries where the parade would stop, a speech was made, flags were posted,  and Taps played.  I marched in it when I was in 3rd grade, I think.  I was a Bluebird.  That's the beginning group of Campfire Girls.  For me, at that time, it was just a fun experience.  I knew we were honoring our War dead but it had no real meaning for me.

How different it is for me today!  I now reflect on my father's Army service in the European theatre of WWII, my father-in-law's Naval service in the Pacific during WWII, my high school friends' service in Vietnam, and my friends' sons' and daughters' service in the Gulf War and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As an adult, I can now realize a lot that I didn't as a young kid.  I can now see what costs the War took on my Dad.  He never talked about his experiences while we were growing up.  And I think that was the norm for that generation.  What they had seen and experienced couldn't be put into words, really.  They were home at last and wondering why they made it and so many didn't.  There are now so many articles about PTA, post traumatic syndrome, that the public understands more about war's cost than we did before.  But for me as a kid, I never knew what Dad suffered.  It was only in my adult years that I came to understand how war had affected him and changed him.  It was a surprise and a great honor for us to learn after our father's death, that he had won 5 Bronze Stars.  But it also brought sadness to my heart to realize that he had seen 5 major battles in his time in Europe and therefore so much death and horror.

I know he spoke to me about the Warsaw Ghetto since he was with the first American troops to enter Warsaw.  He was always angry that the Yanks had to wait outside Warsaw while the Russians were given the first entry.  And how appalled he was with what he found.  That and the death camp he liberated.  

Yet these conversations were brief and rare.  And they only occurred after many years had gone by.  My father-in-law is the same.  It's only in recent years that he talks about his experiences in the Pacific Ocean.  The horrible typhoon that his ship went through along with so many others in his fleet.  His being on watch while ships were sinking.  His conversation with a Captain of a ship within his fleet who told him they were going down.  And how years later, on a cruise with my Mother-in-law, he met the wife of that very Captain!!  There are no coincidences!!!  Dad K also wondered often in his life, why he survived when so many didn't.  Mom K always told him that Our Lady was protecting him to bring him to her.

Perhaps these men, who witnessed so much at such a young age, can only now reflect verbally about what those years meant and did.  With the passage of years comes wisdom hopefully.  I know for my Dad it also brought self-forgiveness.  The "survivor guilt" was finally let go.  They served honestly for a cause that needed to be won.  Freedom.  The right to live life as best you can without tyranny.  And so in their later years, each man saw the honor of what they did as well as the reality of what happened to them.  

As a mother, I never saw my son go off to war.  I was blessed in that.  My friend, Roni, saw her son go off to Iraq twice.  I saw her worry, her pain, and her incredible faith tested.  Today, war is immediate for all of us.  The media brings it into our home as it is happening.  So what is better?  To know what is going on today or to not have explicit visions daily but only what your mind can imagine as it was in WWII?  Both are horrible realities.  I can only imagine what price mothers and fathers all over our country paid as they sent sons and daughters off to all the wars. 

So here's the conclusion I've come to.  All of us pay a price whenever our country engages in War.  It's not just the soldiers who have to do the job.  It's everyone of us.  Either on the front lines or supporting from back home.  Every soldier's life has to matter to all of us.  Because without their presence, we wouldn't have what we do, here, in the USA.  War is a reality.  No one wants it.  But history shows it's always present.  We need to understand what we are fighting for and speak for or against it according to our conscience.  But we all have the responsibility to support our brave men and women.

This Memorial Day I remember all who have given their lives throughout our Nation's history.  May we always honor them as they so richly deserve.  And to my Dad, I thank you not only for the sacrifice you made in your 20's but for the long years of pain you suffered because of that service.  Be at peace forever more Dad.