The Stories We Share

— Memorial Day Blog —

On Memorial Day, we honor and mourn the U.S. military personnel who have given their lives while serving their country. Those nineteen words look so small at the top of this paper yet represent the greatest gift a person can give: their life. From each personal sacrifice individuals and families made, a country emerged where anything was possible. In America, people were no longer confined by the lineage of their surnames, the place to which they were born, or the expectation that they would spend their life limited. My father was too young to fight in WW2. However, he was stationed in Germany after the war, being that my family is from London, England. He went on to be one of the Coldstream Guards at Buckingham Palace. His entire life, his dream was to come to America, and in 1969 that dream came true.

The stories of the war entertained me as a child, and now that my father has gone, they have become the record that often plays in my mind before I fall asleep. The stories of the people who serve, the people that we loved and who loved us, never go away. This one day we celebrate as the beginning of summer, we pull out the white pants and hang them in the closet again and get ready to head out for a Barbecue. Maybe this year, if you ask around to your friends, you will find someone with their own record of memories, like mine, who will share a family story of a loved one who gave their life for the betterment of others. As long as we talk about those who are gone, we keep them alive. Love for those who are no longer with us is like the wind, we cannot see it, but we can watch the limbs of the trees bend, and the shapes of the clouds move through the sky, and we know that love lives on through the stories we share.

— Memorial Day Blog —