Today is Memorial Day 2009. You probably aren’t reading this on the actual day, as it is late in the evening as I sit down to write, but I hope you take a few moments wherever you are and just realize what it means to give the ultimate sacrifice.
I’ve never really known someone who has died in a war, but at the same time, there have only been a handful of wars in my lifetime, and none have been on the scale of the generation of my grandparents.
Vietnam, Grenada, Kosovo, The Gulf War, The Iraqi War, the war on Terrorism – I’ve been separated from all these events. Only a handful of my fiends from high school entered the military, and we quickly lost touch as I spent a year abroad after graduation.
As a boy, my parents would toss my brother and I in the back of the dragon wagon (the Green Ford Torino Station Wagon) and drive to some battlefield, or cemetery. It was educational I was told.
History was never my strong suit, I was more of the science guy. At least at first. Then, later in life, I made a radical shift toward Art, specifically photography, as my loyal readers probably know. And strangely enough that turns back to history. Every event that I now photograph, I know that I am documenting the event for future generations. Creating wedding photographs means capturing memories, and delivering them to the bride and groom.
And it is the memories of the family and friends that we carry with us – of lost siblings, parents, grandparents and friends – that defines who we are. We carry with us a bit of them – and on today, Memorial day, please take a moment to think about all the others who don’t have anyone left to think about them.
{ 1 comment }
Good blog with feeling. Your friends not fiends 0r may you did mean fiends.
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