Remembrance

My remembrance is all I can give, but it’s not much.

Today is just one day, this moment just one moment. That is the remembrance I give.

But when I walk through a sunny meadow, when I laugh at the joke of a friend, when I fall asleep on a soft mattress I don’t remember. I don’t have to remember.

That is the sacrifice that was made for me. The sacrifice of everything with the reward of nothing, not even a thought. Not even a memory.

As I walk through a sunny meadow today a man, like me in all ways, walked through a sunny meadow in France 100 years ago. I walk and enjoy the sunlight, savour the breeze and complain about forgetting my hat. He walks into fire and blood. The heavy mud caked to his legs and feet makes trudging slow and laborious. Poison fills the craters around him and thunder fills the air. Humanity lays in pieces all around him.

As I walk back to my car to drive home he walks into a meat grinder, the deadliest battlefield in history.

Every moment of our lives today was paid with blood of those that went before us, and those who fight for us now. Each day is a series of moments absent of a memory of this.

Today, for one brief moment, I can give a small gift of remembrance. Not to glorify, but to express my gratitude that during the rest of the moments I can forget.