Memorial Day: heroes, she-roes and families
Submitted by Dr. Gwenn Is In
When I was growing up, I would spend every Memorial Day marching in our town parade in the marching band. I did that for 10 years. Each Memorial Day always seemed unusually hot for the season, then again we were in these very uncool-looking wool marching band uniforms!
I was always amazed how many people would come out to see the parade…and follow us to the cemetery to honor our local heroes. I will never forget the chill that would run down my spine as a trumpeter would play taps as I recognized that even in my small New England town we had local heroes to honor from wars that span all of history.
Memorial Day weekend is a bitter sweet weekend. It’s the unofficial start of the summer - a time to celebrate the school year ending and the summer about to begin. This is the weekend we see pools opening, decks getting set up and porches and grills coming to life. It’s a wonderful taste of what is about to come in just a few weeks time.
At the same time, not every family can celebrate, at least not fully, as their loved ones are still deployed or have lost their lives in one of the recent military campaigns. We owe it to these many families to pause at some point this weekend to acknowledge that we’re safe and able to be with our families because of the sacrifices made by so many other families. Whether you do so privately or at your town’s annual event, make sure your children know that this weekend is not just an ordinary family weekend. This weekend is actually about celebrating the bravery and selfless acts of the men and women in our military, and their families.
Maya Angelou put it best when she wrote:
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
(Deployment can be very hard on children, even once their parent has returned home. For information on helping a child once a soldier returns home from deployment, click here)
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