Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, a day designed to honor and remember those who gave their lives serving our country and protecting our freedom.

As a young child, my mom would take me to the cemetery on Memorial Day to visit the grave of my brother, who passed away eighteen years before I was born from a heart condition. I never knew him — only recognized him from the pictures that lived around our house. I often wondered: if he had lived, how different would our family have been? Would I have even been born at all?

When we got home, my dad would fire up the BBQ. It was the first of three cookouts we’d have each year — Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. A trilogy of smoke and summer and family gathered in the backyard.

Memorial Day was also the weekend of the Indy 500. And as I got into my teens and early twenties, I started associating it with the Bulls deep in the Eastern Conference Finals. And of course, Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of the summer movie season.

Now, as an adult, that’s still how I’m spending it — movies, NBA conference finals, and the Indy 500-

My mom, my dad, and my brother are all buried next to each other. But those gravesites are across the country, and honestly, I don’t even remember the name of the cemetery or exactly where it is. One thing memory lets go of. Another, it keeps.

And maybe that’s the point. The memories we carry — the smell of charcoal, the roar of race engines, the sound of a crowd in a stadium — those are the gifts of people who came before us, and people who sacrificed so we could have ordinary, beautiful days like this one. The least we can do is notice. The least we can do is be grateful.

What’s one Memorial Day memory — a smell, a sound, a tradition — that still lives in you, and what do you think it’s been quietly teaching you about gratitude?