I have not always remembered Memorial Day, as a child I remember going to lots of parades and trips to the cemetaries, placing flags, and flowers on graves. My Father was big on Memorial Day, on remembering and honoring those that died, those that served our country. He had been a post commander at a VFW (my Mother had also been an auxillary president - it seemed destined to be in our blood.) He was also a member of the color guard for the American Legion and a host of other things. We marched, we celebrated, we remembered.

I stopped remembering Memorial Day in my twenties. That last one was a cold pouring rain day. I watched my father march in the parade, the men shivering in their white short sleeve shirts. My girlfriend and I ran up and down the parade route, trying to keep warm and dry, and waiting for the parade to pass us by. Actually we were looking for others that where watching the parade - there were none. We walked the whole parade route and saw, maybe, ten people. I couldn’t understand why no one cared. We went to the VFW Hall, and had hot dogs and coke, and then decided we were cold and tired and went home. Later that night I ran every red light for thirty miles racing my father to the hospital. Two weeks later he was gone, and I stopped remembering Memorial Day.

I had friends who tried, they invited me to parties or just came over. They talked, then they forgot why I didn’t do Memorial Day, and eventually it seemed like a 3 day weekend. Then I moved to a small town, they had a parade and I went. I go every year. It is a funny parade, if you are up at the beginning, the parade is less than an hour, a little past the middle of the route (where I sit) it’s about 2 hours, at the park at the end, I bet it takes close to 3 hours. I don’t know. I’ve never moved farther down the route to find out.

But it’s a great parade, the bagpipes, the kids, the dance teams and clubs, the VFW, the American Legion, the Army, the Navy, Korean Soldiers, Korean Wives, Disabled Soldiers, Vietnam and the Gulf and Iraq; they are all there. They march. People stand and clap. They are proud. Even if it’s pouring rain, the route is lined with people, they bring umbrellas and wear jackets. They cry a tear every year as the Korean Soldiers become less and less and the Disabled Veterans become more and more. They remind me what my Father cared about, and this year I get to remember my sister too.

   Do you ever wonder how you got to where you are?

One of the biggest things I do, is think. I think about life, about family, about love. I think of stories, and what if’s. I wonder about what was, and what is to come. I don’t think I ever really wanted to be “something”, to grow up and do one specific thing. I wanted to see the world, to go everyplace, to see everything.

   I made a huge stab of it starting at 17. I left home 3 days after graduation, moving on to seeing things - things in books, in movies, things that became real places I’d been. I slowed down a bit when I tried out different parts of life; the career path, the being in love path, the discovering me path. The last one is kind of funny because you never really discover you. Each choice you make, each person you meet, just changes you, maybe a part becomes clearer, if only for a moment.

   But it’s the moments. The moments that were, the moments yet to be that really excite me. The one thing, the one thing that I have said since I was 5, was I wanted to live to be 105. It sounds like a good number. It gives me longer to see the world. Longer to be in awe of life. Longer to get to know the people who mold me and maybe, by then, I’ll know who I am, but I doubt it.

There are a lot of moments in life, we do not remember. They are missed by the turn of the head, or a blink of an eye. We go on, never knowing if it was important. Then there are moments that become fixed in time. Moments that mean something, or changed something, or dreamed something. You were such a moment. I may have seen you first, but you spoke first, and that moment, when I saw your smile; I looked in your eyes and saw my heart.