Memorial Day Weekend

I never knew these men, but their names and pieces of their lives have crossed my path in one way or another since my husband deployed last year. The point is they became people to me, not just names in a paper or on a casualty list. They had lives, all had children and people they loved and loved them back and they gave it all up.

Today I will remember:

Sean Sims, Heidi and Colin

Tom Wren, his wife and children

Tyler Swisher, his wife and children

Robert Hernandez, his fiancee and children

..And all the soldiers and families they represent who paid the price...If you're not a military member, or heck even if you are, stop and think today about these people. Forget any issues you have with Iraq, it's not really about just this war, I mean, these men dedicated their lives to their country. They stood up and offered up the risk of death so the rest of us could go to parades and eat bbq and take an extra day off work. They signed up for whatever would come this country's way of freedom and safety. I think we forget that.

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Terry will be home soon and I sat at a table for him at church, to recognize the soldiers home and overseas in honor of Memorial Day. I felt terribly sitting there eating good food, making new friends when I know he is hot, dirty and missing his children. It's grossly inadequate to say thank you, but I do, thank you.

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Today Gabe had a baseball game where he struck out every time at bat. There is nothing harder than to watch your child feel discouraged. I felt awful for him! But he handled it well, a true sportsman. Then he and his clone (baseball friend born ten days after him and new BFF) played hours of Xbox until clone friend's mom showed up and we took off to see the Godspeed, a replica of one of the ships the original Jamestown colonists came in on. I gotta say you could have never EVER gotten me on one of those ships. They had like a shoe box to put there stuff in and had to share a square foot of space for months not for a land flowing with milk and honey, I mean at least the Israelites had a promise to look forward to when they crossed the desert, nooooooo, the colonists got to starve, freeze and fight Native Americans. Can you imagine leaving everything you know for a god-forsaken land? (At least to them it was, not to offend and Native Americans) Why did they do it? I wonder sometimes what I would suffer that much for. What would it take for me to give up everything and everyone I loved?

Tomorrow I am off to the O' Club for swimming with my new Army wives (and our brood of children; 5 months, 1, 2, 4, 7, and ten! ) with hubbies away and then we may make the trek into DC for the big concert broadcast on PBS. Monday we'll be back in the city for the parade and some museum trips. I'm excited to show my new English Army wife (she's English, he's American) around the Metro system and pick her brain about England.

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A general spoke at my church event and I have to say this before I finish the point of bringing up his attendance. He is a higher up, Pentagon official with a large role in directing the war on terrorism - and goes to my church! Who knew? I naively thought that after I was pointed at as being one of only two women at this dinner whose husbands were deployed, that he would say something to me. Anything.

"How is your husband doing?"
The truth: tired, wants to come home, smelly, and proud to do his part.
What I would have said: "Proud to do his part (smile)."
Or,
"How are you?"
The truth: tired, wants husband home, smelly and packing the weight on from eating late night snacks to fill the void that my husband created when he left :)
What I would have said: We're hanging in there! (I really don't believe in blatantly lying to the decision makers in the military, but I can't bring myself to say what I really think either.)

But he didn't.

Anyway, he spoke at my church's event and read these words from a letter that Lincoln wrote to a woman who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War. You may recognize it from the movie Saving Private Ryan ( I did) but you may not know that the woman actually lost two sons and others deserted or were honorably discharged or captured by the enemy - and she was a Southern sympathizer. I'll let you draw your own comparisons to a certain modern mother. It's interesting to say the least. Google the "letter to Ms. Bixby" to read more about it. Of course I am probably the last person to know this Wikipedic fact and the next thing I'll learn is that Al Gore actually did invent the Internet.

If I may be so bold as to borrow the words of this letter to express my condolences and appreciation to those soldiers and their families, and who better than Lincoln to attribute it to (though that is also debated):

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic
they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the
loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a
sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.