Memorial Day 2020

Please dear reader, for just a minute this Memorial Day, wear the boots of another.

You’re a good young man, not perfect, but caring, for your family, your neighbors, your country. You have plans and aspirations, to develop skills, form a career, start a family of your own.

One day, those dreams are put on hold, not entirely against your will, but you don’t really have a choice either. Evil threatens, your country calls. You have friends who have already answered that call and now you join them. Your country needs you, your neighbors, your family. You are fully convinced it is the right thing to do and you commit.

You are trained to inflict harm on others, to destroy and break, but you have always been a fixer of things, a builder of things. No matter, you are committed. So you go forth, harming, destroying, breaking. To protect your family, your neighbors, your country.

Then, one day you are driving down a road in a strange land when all of your senses are overloaded in an instant. Light, sound, smell, pain, all overwhelmed beyond comprehension.
You awake in a strange place, in a strange bed, pain, confusion, lament.

Brothers lost – and with them a part of you.

Some of your injuries will never fully heal but what can be are stitched and you continue, harming, destroying, breaking, for your brothers, your family, your neighbors, your country. You must continue, you must fight.

Evil is a reality of the world we inhabit and, as a result, so is war. You didn’t seek glory or have romanticized images of becoming a hero. You were driven by a desire to do what is right, what is honorable, what is good. But now, you have seen it. You have smelled it, lived it. You know the face of anger, terror, and loss at a level that most of us will, very fortunately, never know. And that is now part of you.

But you did it brother. You kept us safe, your family, your neighbor, your country. You did it.

Thank you.