Remember The Brave

The month of May is always very busy for our family. We are only 16 days away from the end of the school year. Hooray! I have always loved that the end of the school year is marked by the Memorial Day Celebration here in the States and since I was a young girl, my family has spent the early morning hours on that special day cleaning up the graves of our family members. Now that I have children of my own, it is a tradition I have maintained.

As we clean the graves I share the stories of these family members, some I never knew, but of whom I learned about in the same way in which my children now come to know these family stories.

My Grandfather was a World War I and II veteran. He served as a Seabee in the Navy. This meant that he went before the main military force and built all of the other structural elements that would be needed for the other service members to follow. He saw some intense battles all across the globe. My father was unable to serve due to an injury, but his brother served in WW II and was among those to liberate the Concentration Camps in Europe. He spoke very little of the experience, but said that his group was as war hardened a bunch as you would ever meet, but that the horrors of those camps left these men in tears and grateful for every bloody step that they had taken in order to get to those camps and liberate the people within them.

I know that today my freedom has been paid for through the sacrifice of brave men and women like this who have served and even died to keep those of us in our home countries safe. America is facing a very strange election season to come and I am not enthused by any of the options I have available to me, but I know that it has never been our politicians who have made us as a country great, it has been our people. I believe this will still hold true no matter who is elected and I am grateful for the many examples we have of brave and good individuals to follow.

And I believe in the power of a good that crosses globally and I am grateful for good people everywhere who are working to make the world we inhabit a better place.

So to celebrate the Memorial holiday I have created a new printable that actually could be carried over throughout the summer and even onto the 4th of July holiday.