I sent this email to my family today thinking they would find me “over the top” only to get replies to the contrary. So I decided to share it with you too! Memorial Day can easily be about the barbeque and in fact, I have one planned today for very own personal Viet Nam vet to make him feel special. But it isn’t all about the food, beer and company!

Enjoy:

Today I watched the President address an audience for Memorial Day on CSPAN. It reminded me of those in my own family who have made it so I have the things I have.

Beginning with my great grandfather Edwards who was a prisoner at Andersonville GA during the Civil War, to my father who faced down Nazis in the Ardennes at the bloodiest battle of World War II at The Battle of the Bulge (his name is on the memorial wall, I took pictures when I was there). My brother who served in our United States Air Force and my husband who went to Viet Nam.

Saturday I was in the airport. There was a family next to me that were loud and obnoxious. I became judgmental when I saw the young woman with a baby “assuming” she was a single parent. Her sister, father and mother all were on my nerves. I wanted them to move away so I could self absorb in just getting home myself.

Then the plane they were waiting for landed. And off came a young man in military uniform who got to come home and see the baby he never met and was met by a wife sobbing who had missed him for far too long. My paradigm shifted immediately. I know where this young man was coming home from. He is one of the lucky ones.

Thank you to those of you who have made it so I can live in the land of the free because of the brave! Sometimes when we complain about America, the economy or whatever we forget that the freedom to bitch about whatever comes from the sacrifices of those who make it so for us.

I know, I know this email is sappy but isn’t this what this day is all about? Later

Have a great Memorial Day to one and all!