Remembering Our Fallen Heroes

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of the summer season. This holiday is usually ushered in with a whole lot of fanfare: parades, air shows, big barbecues, lots of booze, food, and huge parties. The whole fun-in-the-sun-party thing, however, can make us lose sight of the true meaning of this holiday: a day to remember our fallen heroes.

Memorial Day 2020, due to the worldwide battle against COVID-19, has to be celebrated in a much more subdued and quiet fashion, but I think this is a good thing, because this can give us time to reflect on the true meaning of this day and what we're actually commemorating.

Growing up in the fifties in the shadow of WW II, when one TV per household was still the norm, and that TV was, more often than not, conveniently situated in the living room, I was outnumbered and outvoted by my three older brothers and my father, a war veteran and the venerable dictator of the Sansone household, as to what we would all watch on the boob tube; and for those four members of the male species the soup du jour was more often than not – another war movie. On a daily basis, if not on an hourly basis, the terrifying sound of sirens, helicopters, fighter planes, machine guns, and bombs streamed throughout our suburban Cape Cod, filtering out the windows onto the front steps where I sat playing with my McGuire Sisters paper dolls, or Barbie dolls, or coloring books trying in vain to escape the designated war zone. Back then, I thought the sight of blood and guts spilling across the black and white screen couldn’t get any grosser, but a decade later, with the advent of color television, war took on a whole new dimension of cinematograph horror.

For this reason, from the time I was a very young child, Memorial Day was a high-anxiety-producing event. The little, shell shocked girl in me wondered: Parades and potato salad? Grilled hot dogs and hamburgers? Roasted marshmallows and watermelon? What the heck? It all seemed sacrilegious to me on a day that should have been the holiest of holy days, the solemn of solemnest Mondays, became a good excuse for picnics and barbecues, with all the drama and decision making of the day boiling down to whether you wanted mustard and relish, or just mustard on your Oscar Mayer Weiner.

To my utter astonishment and without much fanfare, December 2000, in the dawning of a new millennium, a Congressional Resolution and a Presidential Proclamation called for the observance of a National Moment of Remembrance. Finally, the meaning and message of Memorial Day would be reinstated, even if it took a law to do so, and even if it called for simply – a moment of silence.

This Monday, Memorial Day, at 3:00 pm local time, many radio and television stations across the nation will stop their usual programming to play “Taps,” reminding Americans across the nation to take a moment to pause to remember those who died in the service of our country.

As spring melts into summer, let us all take a moment to pray for our fallen soldiers and to pause for peace. To honor those brave men and women lost to war, wouldn’t it be fitting and proper if each and every one of us did something on Memorial Day to make peace on the planet, one good deed, one kind word, one loving gesture at a time?

And please don't forget our essential workers who have been on the front line throughout this pandemic helping us to get through this crisis. Say a prayer for those workers who have succumbed to the invisible enemy known as the Coronavirus. They're all our heroes as well.

Peace.

Cindi Sansone-Braff is the author of Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships and Grant Me a Higher Love. Visit her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com