Remember them

Faith, hope, and love on Memorial Day | Mindy Belz

Associated Press/Photo by John Raoux

When I was a girl of 8 or 10, Memorial Day meant a fight over a greased watermelon all the way to the deep end of the neighborhood pool, relay races where the swimmers had to be fully clothed, all while barbecue still on the bone roasted on a spit in the shade.

I had two uncles recently returned from Vietnam, and somewhere along those years my grandmother gave me a bright green silk handkerchief embroidered with World War I insignia, a memento from the last Monday in May someone had given to her as a girl. But I must confess that the holiday first known as Decoration Day, set aside in 1868 to honor our war dead, for most of my life meant more than anything else the start of those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

For many of us that changed in 2002. That May we remembered not only men and women killed in U.S. war history, but the 343 firefighters and paramedics and the 60 police officers killed in the line of duty eight months earlier on 9/11. That Memorial Day held ceremonies even to honor rescue dogs that died after inhaling dust at the World Trade Center site during the search for bodies. And by that time there had been 61 U.S. casualties in the war on terror in Afghanistan.