Memorial Day: The Ones We Almost Forgot

Last night, as I was editing my Memorial Day graphic, I remembered a phone call I got from my father a few years ago. He was upset with me as I made a Memorial Day post on Facebook for my friends and family. He was upset that I left my grandfather off that post. I also left my son off it, my husband and my many uncles. I had to explain to my father the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

My grandfather in uniform during World War II.

My grandfather's service deserves to be recognized, to be honored. But there is a difference between honoring veterans and honoring the fallen, and somewhere along the way, that line has gotten blurry for a lot of us. Memorial Day has quietly drifted into a general appreciation weekend for all who served, and while that comes from a place of love and gratitude, I think it unintentionally dilutes something sacred.

Memorial Day belongs to the ones who never came home, the ones who gave the ultimate sacrifice, the ones who gave it all so we can be free.

I didn't fully understand the weight of that until four years ago.

Four years ago, on Memorial Day weekend, I sat in a packed auditorium at my son's boot camp graduation. I was among hundreds of proud, emotional family members watching our kids take one of the biggest steps of their lives. What happened at that ceremony, amidst all the pomp and circumstance, profoundly affected me. It was one of the most emotional days of my life, not just because my son had made it through, but because of what happened next.

The command invited a group of Gold Star Families to attend. As each family was introduced, mothers, fathers, wives, and children who had lost someone in the line of duty, the entire auditorium rose to its feet. The applause didn't stop for fifteen minutes. Fifteen full minutes. There wasn't a dry eye in the building, not among the new recruits, not among the drill sergeants, not among the toughest people in that room. Nobody told us to stand. Nobody told us to keep clapping. We just did. Because some things don't need an order.

As I stood there, now a Blue Star Mom, it hit me that these Gold Star Moms had once sat exactly where I was sitting, living in the moment, bursting with pride and excitement, watching their child begin a new journey. That journey just looked very different now. It took an extraordinary amount of strength for them to walk into that room. I'm honestly not sure, if I were in their shoes, that I could have done it.

That moment stayed with me. And this year, it led me to a story much closer to home.

My son’s Navy graduation ceremony at Great Lakes

My grandfather served in World War II. He was an engineer for the Army Air Corps, assigned to laying airfields in the European theater, in France and in North Africa, in the thick of it. He was a quiet man and rarely spoke of his time in the service. He was also one of the lucky ones. He came home. He lived a long life. He got to grow old. I got to know him.

Not everyone in my family's story was so fortunate.

Before my grandmother met my grandfather, she was engaged to another man. She never spoke of him, not once, until my grandfather passed away. When she finally did, she told us simply that he was a pilot, and that he had been shot down over Italy. When she died, we found an envelope tucked carefully away in her hope chest. Inside was his photograph, a Bible, and letters, correspondence that had never been sent. A piece of a life that never got to continue.

A hopeful WWII pin-up photograph my grandmother intended to send overseas to her fiancé to lift his spirits. Inscribed with love, it was never mailed.

Ever since then, I have been searching for him. The man who did not return. The man who left her brokenhearted. The man who gave everything so that we could be free.

I think I finally found him.

He never came home

What I discovered as I dug deeper was a story of loss that is almost too heavy to hold. He was a pilot shot down during the Sicily campaign. He never came home. And then, six months later, his brother, also a pilot, was lost too, shot down over Germany and never found. Two brothers, two sons, one family shattered completely by the war.

Most people don't know that the military eventually created what is commonly called the "Sole Survivor Policy," a rule designed to prevent exactly this kind of devastation, to keep whole families from being wiped out by a single war. Years later, the idea behind that policy would become widely known through the movie Saving Private Ryan. That policy exists because of stories like theirs. Because of a mother who lost both of her boys. Because of a father, himself a World War I veteran, who knew better than most the price that freedom sometimes demands, and who paid it twice over anyway. That policy personally affected my grandfather, whose younger brother was able to stay home to work the farm.

This Memorial Day, I am choosing to honor the distinction.

My grandfather will always have my love and my gratitude. Veterans Day is his day, and I will celebrate him then with everything I have. But today belongs to the ones who didn't make it back. Today belongs to the Gold Star families who walked into that gymnasium with their heads held high while the rest of us wept. Today belongs to a young pilot shot down over Sicily, and his brother lost somewhere over Germany, and the mother who had to bury the idea of them both.

Today belongs to every name on every wall. Every folded flag. Every empty chair at a table that was never meant to be empty.

U.S. Army photo by Elizabeth Fraser / Arlington National Cemetery

We owe them more than a long weekend. We owe them the truth of what this day is really for.

Their sacrifices will not be forgotten.