We spent Memorial Day weekend at the cabin, and it was everything I needed—quiet, peaceful, full of birdsong and lake breezes. I ran into our neighbor there, the one who lost her significant other last Thanksgiving. He was an Army veteran, and this was her first Memorial Day without him. Her eyes filled when she told me his nephew had come up to visit, and I told her, honestly, how glad I was she had someone to remember him with. It makes all the difference.

Grief is such a strange companion. It shows up in the stillness, in the sound of a song, in the way the light hits a certain corner of a room. It's easier when there's someone else to say, “Yes, I remember too.”

I was only three when my own father died. He was an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War. Too few people in my life now can share memories of him. It's like a whole section of my history is made of shadows and stories—precious, but incomplete. I cling to the fragments I do have. The shape of his hands. His flannel shirts. His optometry office, the practice he joined after the war.

My husband served in the Air Force too, during the first Gulf War. He came home safely, thank God—but not everyone did. We don’t talk about that much. But I see it in his face when the old war movies come on. I see it when the jets fly low overhead. I see it when he stands a little too still during the national anthem.

Today is not just a day off. It’s not just for cookouts and lake trips, though we do those things too. It’s a day for remembering. A day to pause and hold space for the ones who never made it home. For the families who set one less place at the table. For the friends left holding folded flags instead of hands.

To everyone who is mourning today, I see you. I grieve with you. And I thank your loved one, from the bottom of my heart.

​This country—flawed and beautiful as it is—was built on sacrifices like theirs. May we never forget.