Memorial Day, 2006

I tried to find my previous postings for Memorial Day, and I cannot! I have a very hard time believing that I would actually not have written before on this date, because it is always an important day to me.

I touched on many topics for Veteran's Day, 2004, and three others for Veteran's Day, 2005 here, here, and here.

I am sitting here feeling shame that I have no previous words to return to for this day! I have 'celebrated it' since I was a child, in Girl Scouts, marching in the parade, (crossing that dreadful main draw-bridge over the River running through my town with the grates that you could see through ... ), helping to plant flags, reading names of fallen soldiers on our Memorial in downtown that is no longer there. I am, therefore, ashamed of myself for not remembering to put even a small note to mark Memorial Day, 2005 here, in my blog.

But I think that maybe part of the reason that I have written on Veteran's Day and somehow missed last year's Memorial Day is because I have not personally lost anyone member of my family, my friends, my class to war.

I am a member of the Vietnam War era, torn by protestors who, in my humble opinion, often crossed the line into the area of treason.

There were many of my friends drafted into the Military in that large lottery draft that took men aged 19-26 in huge numbers in the year we married, 1970. Some newlyweds returned from their honeymoon to find the mail included the new husband's draft notice, with orders to report almost immediately. They came VERY close to drafting my own new husband that year. A brother enlisted into the Air Force when his own very high number proved that he would never be drafted (about 300). The following year, they drafted very few, in comparison.

But those who enlisted or were drafted that I knew, all returned home. Some forever affected by what they had seen and heard over there...affected enough to cross the line into alcoholism and drugs to help them forget. And each of them knows someone on that Wall in DC.

Today, we remember those who have died for our country in any of the wars of the past, and say thank you. Thank you not only to those who gave their lives, but also to the families that they left behind.

And some of us ask for forgiveness for having forgotten, even for a brief minute, their sacrifice.

God bless!