I have a few beautiful women that I have been blessed to know who have buried their husbands. They buried their lovers, their partners, their children's fathers, their best friend...their soldier. Each of them have handled their heartache in amazing ways. I am humbled to know them. I am humbled to call them my friends. I am humbled to have sat at the funerals.
I am broken by this nations attitude about Memorial Day. Sure...people will maybe take one or two minutes to comment on the "cost" of freedom, but then they turn around and move right along to their pool parties, or their barbeque's, or their "family" vacation. To many people, it's just a three or four day weekend.
In our home, we have no party. We do not play or do anything "vacationy". We remember the fallen soldiers. We spend our weekend talking about those we have loved and lost to war. We remember their family members who have been left behind. We pray for them. We talk about them.
I want to take a few moments to talk to you about one soldier in particular who was very significant to my husband, and also to me. He was the first soldier that we have ever known to have perished in Iraq. My husband had a deep love for him. He considered him one of his best friends. His name was Yoe. The first time I met Yoe, was when I had come up to visit my husband one weekend from college. He came over to visit with my husband and we all three sat around talking. I think he was on CQ and he wanted a movie to watch. I sort of forget the small details. Anyway....he was telling us about his wife. He was telling us about how he met her and that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. He was saying that love like that was worth everything and that if we loved each other that way...we should never be apart. The subject came up because my husband and I (at the time) were not yet married and the question came up if we were going to get married or not...
Yoe used to always make me laugh. Before they deployed, I was pregnant with our first child. He told me that he would always call our child CAJ (this was because if the baby was a boy, his name would have been Caleb Aiden Jones). I remember asking him, what if it's a girl? And he said...I don't care. It's not a girl! It's a boy! And HE will always be CAJ!
My husband has a thousand stories of Yoe. He tells them to me and our children often. Something will trigger his memory and he'll talk about how Yoe did this, or Yoe said that. One story that he told us about recently was that during the ground war his hair got so long that he would slick it back. So another Sgt in the platoon started calling him Guido and that the entire company joined in on the nick name. Or how he would tell all of the Iraqi children to go see another Sgt because that Sgt had "chocolate". My husband said Yoe thought it was the funniest thing ever when the children would swarm that Sgt asking him for chocolate.
It has been almost six years since Yoe went to heaven. Honestly, it feels like yesterday. The wound is still fresh. The hole is still here. My husband misses him terribly. I miss him. And the depth of our grief and our sadness is nothing compared to his beautiful wife. She has the highest level of strength I have ever seen in a woman. Throughout all of the years I have been blessed to have known her, she has mourned with the utmost grace and honor. I will never forget sitting beside her and her family at Fort Riley for his memorial service. I will never forget the moments where they gave her the flag. I will never forget his laugh and his silliness. I will never forget what she gave for this country. I will never forget him.
So, you will have to forgive me if I struggle with how people "celebrate" Memorial Day. To me it is a heartbreaking day. It is a sad day. It is a day that honors and remembers the fallen. It isn't just another three day or four day weekend. We are sad to have lost those we have loved. We are sad and mourning with the families who are still here. We are broken. We are crying. We are grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment