Memorial Day Weekend

Get the white shoes ready! We can wear them this weekend and all throughout summer until Labor Day. At least that’s what my memory dictates. Is it still true? White shoes only from Memorial to Labor Days? Of course white tennis shoes are legitimate year round, but hard leather shoes abide by a different standard.

I doubt the same fashion sense applies to shorts. Those are worn whenever the temperature allows it. Else we would freeze in cool weather and swelter in hot and humid days regardless of the calendar.

At any rate Memorial Day is here once again. This is the weekend – three glorious days – during which we remember all those men and women who lost their lives while defending our nation. Mostly these good people were lost during times of war but in peace time good souls are also lost while in the service of our military. Sometimes they are lost during training exercises, gaining the experience and skill sets they will need during a national crisis or war. But something goes terribly wrong. A training ship founders and sinks, a plane or helicopter malfunctions and lives are lost in the following crash.

So too are lives lost on faux battle skirmishes; a trainee loses his step and falls from an elevated sniper position, or off the side of a ship, or bridge. Maybe training ammo is a bit too powerful and body strikes result in fatal injuries.

Or common auto accidents while on a training mission out of country. The accidents that kill civilians also take lives of military personnel. Living has its risks, too, only much lesser so than military staff.

Lost lives. Disrupted family lives. Anguish of irreplaceable love and attention. Gaps that last and are never filled.

Oh, survivors pick up the pieces and move forward but always changed because of their losses.

All of this does not address the surviving military personnel badly injured, maimed and disabled. They remain with us in altered states attempting a return to a new normal. And the families? They too have their struggle to adapt and move on with the new normal.

Memorial Day recalls the sacrifice made by others for all of us. We owe them a great deal. We owe them our remembrance and appreciation. We continue to benefit from what they gave up for us. We are strangers to them but they paid a dear price for our well being.

Remember this during the weekend. Think of gratitude. Think of your thanks.

Now we can consider summer and its special joys. But only after we remember the others.

May 22, 2015