Thank you, one and all, past and present, living or gone on to glory, You made our lives the better for having served your/our country.

I am not sure I ever understood Memorial day as a child, on any level. It was a day that Daddy didn't have to work and we got to have a picnic or maybe a barbecue. Sometime we got to go camping and fishing. My grandfather and his brother served in the second world war but he died when I was 4 and half, and my great uncle lived a long ways away and we didn't see this often until I was in my teens. Even when they were alive they never spoke of or referred to the great war. They wanted no honoring so we weren't really aware of their service on a level that touched out lives.

Shortly after I meant Poppie his mother was very angry with me, she wanted me to go put stuff on graves at the cemetery. I was a lesser person in her eyes for many a year as I don't, and never have gone to my grand parents graves. I was to my grandmother Gladys's once after the funeral but it was so lonely and hollow there I have never returned. I was raised to believe that people are dust to dust and when they die their bodies are not them, it has gone back to the ground from hence they came. I feel no connection to the grave site. I was never taught that I should and biblically see no reason to now. I am sure to some, like my mother in law, this is heartless and uncaring. I don't celebrate the dead in the ground, I celebrate and honor, the loved ones living in eternity in heaven. I feel no draw to the grave site. I know that is not what most people feel but it is the way I was raised and have raised my kids.

I have, as an adult in my older years, come to honor the sacrifice of the so many that have given their lives to our country and our way of life. I don't understand the military, all the much on a personal level, but on a political and intellectual level I see the all that have given their all with new understand and respect. I have a son in law, that I don't know really at all, that is in the service. He has been in Iraq and Afghanistan and has served his county there. He deserves my respect for this service. I have a nephew that too has served, his ex-wife and mother of his child served as well. In my family, though the last few generation haven't served, I am sure as with my grandfather and great uncle many have served, I know their great grand father served in the Civil war so I am a product of service if not ever generation like so many families are.

I do honor the ones, and there are so many, in this generation serving in the longest war this country has ever endure. So many have served over and over again, so many have died but so many more are bringing home war injuries apparent or hidden. They will endure this, or more like, these last two wars the rest of their lives and it will effect the lives of their children all of their lives. How many of us never feel, or are even aware, of the all that so many people past and present have given for us to enjoy the rights we do in this country. How many of us burn the flags, grind it into the ground, picket and or spit on them when they return and not in just these last wars. I do remember the return of the troops from Vietnam, it was so sad and shameful. Wars have come and gone, the politics has been pro or con, but all men that fought did it for you and me, they believed we had the right to do as we please in this county, to worship where we would, to be all we can be, to vote and change things and they gave us the right not to vote if we choose, how many countries allow that? I don't pretend to know any thing about the sacrifice, and the heart, it takes too stand up and say "I want to volunteer to give my life for my fellow American and my country" and then follow through with their service and often their lives. I only know of Jesus's sacrifice for us, as I read it in my bible. Some how the sacrifices, on this day of all days, are surely in the same vain. Jesus gave his life for us, the children he loved and knew. The soldier gives his all for the so many he doesn't know, the future American lives and ideals of this country, today of all days we need to stand up and say thank you with out you I would be????? tomorrow.