At the end of today, people will head out of the office and into a long weekend of BBQs and maybe even a little get-away. They will celebrate the beginning of summer which is marked by Memorial Day. Everything summer opens up Memorial Day weekend. School’s out for summer. Except here. We had too many snow days this year. Michael’s last day of school is the 29th. The Cabbage’s last day of middle school is a half day on a Monday, June 2. They are so mad and have spent weeks complaining about having to go in for half a day on a Monday on the first day of summer. They’ve been petitioning an out, but their mom thinks they shouldn’t miss their last day of middle school. I am Switzerland on the subject, but honestly, the Cabbage has been over middle school since December. They’re ready to move on.
We have plans for attending a BBQ on Sunday with Jenn and Wade and some other friends. We’ll do the typical Memorial Day stuff even though Memorial Day has not been typical for me or my family in a really long time. This August will mark twenty years without my nephew, J. For those of you knew to my blog, we lost J to a car bomb in Iraq, August 1st 2005. My family is a small one and J was more little brother then nephew thanks to our four year age gap. Despite having a wife and two little boys (who are now grown adults), he did what a number of young people did after the attacks of Sept 11. He joined the Marine reserves as a way to serve and honor his country. We were all a bit delusional in thinking that because he was part of the reserves and had a young family, the government wouldn’t send him to Afghanistan. And they didn’t. They sent him to Iraq and two weeks before he was supposed to come home, his unit was hit with a car bomb. J came home to us in pieces and this broke my tiny family.
My tiny broken family has changed quite a bit in the last twenty years. J’s young boys are now grown men with wives. His young wife remarried and has two more boys, who I guess are not so much boys anymore as they are young teenage men. My tiny family grew a little bit with the addition of these people but then shrunk a bit with the loss of Chris and Dad. We’ve all moved forward. I no longer visibly cringe when someone thanks me for my sacrifice. It has taken me twenty years to understand that what I really sacrificed was naivety and innocence. I did not willing offer up my nephew to be a sacrificial lamb for this country. Instead, I sacrificed the idea that such tragedy could ever happen to my family. I sacrificed a belief that my country would ever allow such tragedy to happen to any family.
Twenty years later and I still don’t understand how J’s presence in Iraq helped this country.
My so called sacrifice shapes my vote, as I meticulously research candidates and their stance on veteran affairs and support of military families. It is one of the many reasons I did not vote for Josh Hawley (MO. Rep). He voted against supporting expanded health care for our veterans. The DOGE, set up by Trump, cut thousands of jobs for the Department of Veteran Affairs, a department that was already understaffed and implemented a hiring freeze. Veterans will now have longer wait times for health care, disability claims, burial and funeral expenses and the Veteran’s Crisis Line. As a citizen, it’s not like I didn’t care about these issues before this country wrongfully sent J to Iraq. It just made me care more and because of that, Memorial Day is more than BBQs and sales events. It’s about remembering those who died in service for this country, one that doesn’t truly support them.
I am grateful to those who support our military with more than words and accolades. I am grateful for those who still choose to serve in spite of the lack of support they will receive from this administration. I am grateful J turned out to be the kind of person who believed in doing good deeds and a man of integrity. I am grateful to the young ROTC group who decorated J’s grave site this morning by raising the American flag, something the group does every year. I am grateful to spend some time with friends this weekend and I’m grateful for the start of summer.