Chris Writing Anything

Acceptance.

Man, in my life, I think I’ve struggled with that, and it remains a handicap to this day. Today, for example, and since it was Memorial Day, I did something fairly bizarre. I woke up, played my brain games and showered…okay, that’s normal as hell, I do it everyday.

Yet, after my shower, I selected my Robin Yount Milwaukee Brewers jersey for a top, and I clipped lilacs from the bush in my backyard. After that, I made a solitary pilgrimage to Maplewood, Wisconsin.

Okay, although I claimed that I had made a pilgrimage, that would be a slight exaggeration. Maplewood resides forty minutes from Green Bay. Instead of using the word pilgrimage, I’ll say I made a trek. The reason was simple: My grandfather was a US Army veteran, a recipient of the Purple Heart and a survivor of the Normandy Invasion.

So, considering I had no plans this morning, I decided to place lilacs over my grandparents’ resting place. With that in mind, I made the trek, donned in Brewers apparel, like I was nine years old.

When I arrived, reality hit me like a brick. And the memories of my childhood had ceased. I stood atop a hill, amongst a small gathering of grave sites, and I surveyed the steeple of the red brick church across the road. Then I looked at the date of my grandfather’s death: 2003.

Since his death, an entire generation has past. The World War II survivors, a group of individuals who collectively did a ton of good on Earth, are no more. The world is changing, and I was simply thinking of childhood heroes.

I needed to accept those things, because, for me to function, for the world to function, we must realize those things are past.

That’s what Memorial Day is to me.

That bittersweet notion that something very significant has come to pass is tough to grasp. Yes, although we must move on, we can’t deny how they affected the world around us. Many have died tragically, but heroically, for the preservation of this nation. And though many of us would rather not live with that hard fact, there is consolation.

And today, this designated day of remembrance, we are allowed to carry on and, standing upon our heroes’ shoulders, create an even better world.

Enjoy this Day!