I wanted to share with you again this post that I wrote last year. I have never re-shared one of my own posts before, but this one so clearly captures what I was feeling at the time, and so feel, when I contemplate the meaning behind Memorial Day.
This is a day we chose to honor the memories of our fallen families, and especially the memories of those who have given their lives in service to our country.
This holiday may not be marked by the chaotic, commercialized excess with which we endow other holidays, but it is no less important in meaning.
So today, however you chose to celebrate, with fireworks and parades or visits to the graves of loved ones or just a cookout with family and friends, I wish you and yours all the best for this most solemn and proud holiday. Happy Memorial Day!
This cemetary has been in use for perhaps generations. Photo by Astrid Photography. on Foter.com / CC BY-NC
One of my earliest reminisces of this May holiday, before I even understood its real meaning, is of riding in the back of a pickup truck with my family down winding country roads to reach the old family cemeteries. Once there, we would disembark and make our way up a hilly path, to a fenced-in area of carefully tended lawn bordered by shady trees. Laden with plastic tulips and daisies, we would seek the markers for ancestors whose names I only recognized from stories, and place our bounty in careful clusters and rows.
This is one way my family honored those who had gone before, ancestors whose faces were etched in the memories of the older generation, and introduced to the children by way of books and boxes of old sepia-toned photos. My…
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