Pole Dancing In The Dark

A Day Late

I wanted to post a heartfelt blurb about what Memorial Day means to me yesterday, but I never got around to it. That’s just typical “wait until the last minute – oh, you mean it’s all ready gone by?” me. I know that I take for granted the freedoms I have. I guess like many, I want to spend more of my time selfishly invested in me. I don’t want to have to think of the sad things or the hard things or the nasty evil spiteful things that make up this world. It’s a coping mechanism to prevent me from short circuiting from the pressures of what is going on lately.

But every now and then, I sit down and assess the things that are my life and the things that go on in the world, outside of my small narrow perspective. When ever I have a really craptastic day at work and feel my blood pressure rise and think about how horrible my job is, I sit and read the news. Lately I read, “Another solider died today in a foreign country" type headline, and I think about how lucky I am, how truly blessed I am, because there are so many men and women out there that are far from home fighting an enemy that doesn’t play by the rules of engagement. And then I think of their families and what they have had to sacrifice. It humbles me.

Hubster’s father is a Vietnam Vet. Both of us are too young to remember much about that war. But his father was in a foreign land for the first few years of hubster’s life, fighting for a cause and a country he believed in while his young wife began to raise this child on her own. I cannot even begin to imagine how fraught with worry she probably was the entire time he was there. I cannot imagine myself in those shoes. Her love for her husband and her belief in the ideals that both of them stood for humble me.

I have had a good life, an easy life, a strife free life because of the men and women felt the same as hubster’s dad. These people that knew that sometimes there are causes worth fighting for and worth dying for. These are the people that really understand that freedom isn’t free.

So, I just want to say Thank you to those that have gone before us, who sacrificed their lives for a belief, a love of country and to the families that love and miss them. I know that it seems inadequate, but it’s all I have. Thank you.

Posted by Ethne at May 31, 2005 06:06 PM