Tag: Memorial Day

Memorial Day—Remembering (and Thanking) a Great-great Grandfather

Life in the Owan household has been tumultuous the past couple of weeks. Confronting my 97-year-old mother’s cognitive decline has been eye-opening and heartbreaking. What makes it even more difficult is that her personality is contributing to the, well, difficulty of managing her care.

But through it all, God has been faithful to provide, sustain, quiet our hearts and provide a path. It is amazing and humbling to see how He has orchestrated the process and provided extra measures of faith, trust, strength and peace. Yes. PEACE!

And today I am enjoying peace and a respite with my beloved after celebrating a wedding and gathering with old, dear friends.

Yet even though I am enjoying the respite of walking along the seashore, feasting on the predictable and soothing rhythm of undulating and crashing waves, my thoughts have been drawn back to the men and women who have given their all—their precious lives—for my country.

And one of those men was a great-great grandfather of mine who wore Union blue, lined up as an Ohio serviceman, and died on some bloody battlefield and is buried somewhere in some state east of the Mississippi.

He fought to save our union. Our Union, which, thank the Almighty, was spared.

Did he get “just one more hug and kiss” from his wife before he marched off or boarded the troop transport train? Did the family envision him alive even though he was no longer? How many months limped by before the heartbreaking death notice was received? Did his family have to peer at some deceased list posted on a main square building, or listen to names read aloud from a list.

Did he promise unequivocally to return to them?

Dear God, how did the family survive after his death?

They must have survived, because my mother is a product of their survival.

This day—Memorial Day—is for his memory and others just like him, killed on home or foreign soil. Lives all sacrificed for freedom and our way of life. To preserve our democratic republic.

All the thousands of men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that I can stroll peacefully along a beautiful beach and enjoy living without looking over my shoulder.

Thank you, great-great grandfather, and all of you who stood and fell beside him!

Don’t ever forget them.

Andrea

Memorial Day: Those Who Gave the Ultimate Sacrifice

I’ve never served in the military, but I’m the daughter of a man who did. A man who sacrificed three and a half years of his prime to defend our country and Europe from Nazi aggression. Halfway around the world, his younger brother combatted Japanese aggression in the Pacific and Asia.

My mother said he left one man and returned another, completely and forever changed. “He was never the same,” she said. While she remembers him the “way he was,” I only knew him the way he returned.

And he wasn’t alone. None of the returning warriors were the same. How could they be?

But he was luckier than many, because he did come home. To my mother’s arms and a good life and the ability to dream dreams and pursue them.

Millions have not been so fortunate. Those who fell on battlefields around the world, including United States soil, at a time when we weren’t so united.

 

Today, in the United States, we remember these fallen, and we say a grateful prayer of thanks. That they were able and willing to fight to defend our way of life, our freedoms.

But I can’t talk about Memorial Day like a former warrior can. A warrior who knows intimately what terror, hate, and evil our service men and women face in battle on land, on sea, and in the air.

In his emotional opinion piece, Ex-SEAL, Jocko Willink, reminds us to remember the warriors who made the supreme sacrifice. And through your remembering, not wasting the time you have on Earth.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/05/25/ex-seal-jocko-willink-remember-warriors-who-made-supreme-sacrifice-dont-waste-your-time-on-earth.html

 

In gratefulness to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the land I so dearly love,

Andrea

Photo credit: Flickr pool photo by Jeff Reardon