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Happy Memorial Day!!

 What do you mean HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY man?!?!?! 

Don’t you know that Memorial Day is when we remember our fallen heroes?

Yes, I know. 

And as someone who has spent decades surrounded by those who have written a check payable to the American People for an amount up to and including their own life . . . Trust me when I say - those who have had that check cashed in full - do not want you moping around on Memorial Day. They want you shooting fireworks. They want you having fun. They want you spending time with friends and family. They want you telling stories about them. Tell how they lived. And if the story is good enough - tell how they died. 

Now - don’t be afraid to shed a tear. Get with some brothers and remember someone who is not hear with us any more. Remember those whose wounds were so deep and dark and hidden that they took their own life as they never really left that battlefield. Watch some parades. Visit a memorial site. Go to the Veterans Cemetery near you and go be with someone remembering a lost loved one. Meet a stranger and share in their grief and be there with them to help lift them up. Remember their loved one with them. Ask them about how their loved one lived  talk about the happy memories. 

There are those who I have seen in their final moments. Bloodied, broken, torn apart, weeping, screaming, scared, . . . I choose not to remember them that way  I remember the pranks we pulled. I remember the stories they told as we sat through the dull moments of combat. I remember time spent together back home. 

So have a happy Memorial Day!! May you celebrate the lives lives of those who sacrificed so much.


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