This past week, just before Memorial Day, I found myself having a conversation I’ve had too many times before. I was talking with a family friend about his time served in the military and my husband’s time served. While swapping stories, I was reminded of a moment, a conversation, that will be forever etched into my brain.
A family member, with the best of intentions of trying to ease my nerves while my husband was deployed in 2019, said to me: “At least you don’t have anything to worry about. It’s not like people are being killed over there anymore.”
I stood in silence for a moment. Not in anger, but in disbelief. My husband had barely landed during his first deployment when his company lost two men, men he knew. Buddies. Then the close calls that happened all too regularly, the rocket attacks, the multitude of vehicles that hit IED’s, some big enough that his friends were lucky to be taken out alive.
I looked at her and gently said, “That’s not true.” I told her about the names we’ve added to the mental roll call of men who don’t get to come home. About the messages that came in the middle of the night. The calls received from other wives and mothers who haven’t heard from their husband or son for too long, ones that always ended with “Let me know if you hear from your husband and I’ll do the same.”
She was stunned. Not out of malice or ignorance, but because she’d never heard it. It wasn’t in the news.
That, I think, is what bothered me the most.
Somewhere along the way, the sacrifice stopped being headline-worthy. Somewhere along the way, the boots on the ground half way across the world stopped making it into living rooms across America. Yet, the danger never left. The loss never lessened.
For those of you who live this life, Memorial Day is not a holiday of convenience. It is not a chance to snag a good sale or an excuse to fire up the grill. For many, it’s sacred. It’s a day when all too many feel the weight of empty chairs, when we whisper names in prayer, when we remember faces frozen in time.
I think most just want people to remember. To really remember, there are men and women who laid down their lives for freedoms we too often take for granted. There are families still grieving, still healing, still waking up each day without the one they loved most in this world.
Memorial Day is about people, honorable, courageous people who didn’t come home. The truth is, their stories may not always make the news, but they live on in the hearts of many.
This past week reminded me how easy it is to forget something once it is no longer visible. However, the bravery never stopped, and the memories many hold are more than just names etched in stone, they are lives worth remembering.
I write this, in hopes it makes you pause. I hope you take a second to think about or pray for the ones who gave everything—and the families who live every day honoring their memory.
Because for many, Memorial Day is never over.
Gone but never forgotten.
SSG Ian P. McLaughlin, PFC Miguel A. Villalon, SPC Michael I. Nance and PFC Brandon J. Kreischer.