Remember
It is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day to remember those men and women who have laid down their lives in the service of our country.
Yet, in the grandest of American traditions, as a nation we mark the day primarily by shopping. Memorial Day sales are legendary; perhaps it’s a day better spent hearing the stories of our relatives who have been to war. Just maybe.
Last week, I flew home from New York. On the last leg of my trip, I was deep into self-whining: I’ve been on the road for weeks, my neck hurts, the flight is late again, would it kill Delta to give me more than peanuts for dinner? It was the Self-Pity Olympics and I was a Gold Medalist.
As I settled in for the last one-hour flight, I was just plain irritated. The air conditioning wasn’t working on the plane, people were breathing on me, the cell phone chatter was too loud and personal and intrusive. Poor pitiful me, I thought to myself. Pity, whine, pity, whine, pity, whine more.
And as I sat there in my wholly grumpy self, feeling like the business world’s sacrificial lamb, my seatmate arrived. Reaching into my carry-on bag for an Altoid, I saw a large shoe stop in the aisle, a beige sand-colored boot with sand-colored camouflage pants legs stuffed into it. My seatmate was a young soldier on the last leg of his trip home, not from 2 nights in a nice hotel in Rochester, but from 18 months in Iraq. He was returning home to see his baby daughter for the first time; I was more than humbled, I was ashamed. Other passengers kept stopping by our row of seats to thank him for his sacrifice.
No matter what I believe about this war, or wars past, as I thought about his sacrifice for my life–for yours–I stopped whining. It gave me pause. I haven’t sacrificed like that, ever. As I talked with him, I remembered another flight home.
As I had walked out of the gate that time, a woman and three small children raced past me, jumping onto a serviceman who had been walking behind me, flinging themselves on him like they would never let him go, the children burying themselves in him, sobbing. It was a reunion that took into account the very possibility of it never happening.
My husband John’s great-grandmother’s sacrifice was legendary in Housatonic, Massachusetts. The War Department provided a star for each son in service; in her window hung five stars–her five sons all served at the same time in World War II. People came from around the Berkshires to see the stars in her window, to say a quiet thank you, a silent nod at how hard it was for her to say goodbye to those boys.
John always used to call my stepfather on Memorial Day just to say a quiet thanks. Boyce never talked about his service as one of Patton’s Ghosts, but he won five bronze stars for what he had to do, what he did, what he saw and always remembered. We never even knew he had five bronze stars until we found his service record when he died. He never said, he just did.
All of us have lost something when wars are fought; some have lost everything. Today is a day more suited for humble remembering and honest thankfulness and a rethinking of our own whining and our misplaced self-pity than it is for bargains. Just remember today. You can shop tomorrow.
