Another Memorial Day weekend is upon us.  Generally regarded as the unofficial “kick-off” to summer, this year’s festivities have been hampered by restrictions surrounding the global coronavirus pandemic.  All over the country, weekend and summer plans are changing, vacations are being cancelled, and people are learning to celebrate the summer holidays in their own back yard.

“I don’t understand why I have to sacrifice my vacation when I’m not sick,” – it’s a common response you’ll overhear from some overzealous patriot at the gas station or supermarket.

Sacrifice?  Do you really consider not being able to waddle up and down the boardwalk at the beach while licking an ice cream cone a sacrifice?

Baloney.

What you’re hearing described is an inconvenience.  The whining of a self-centered individual who cares only about what’s in it for them.

I suggest you take a visit to your local cemetery and look for a gravestone or marker with military insignias.  You’ll get a different definition of what “sacrifice” really means.

Throughout history, all over this land and around the world, young Americans left the safety of their homes and families to serve and protect their country.  Many of them had never left their states or local neighborhoods before, but ended up fighting in French forests, Italian hillsides, Pacific islands, Korean and Vietnamese jungles, and Arabian deserts.  They fought “real” tyranny and oppression, and did their duty so that others – whom they would never meet – could live their lives with freedom and opportunity, just like they did back in the United States.  For many of these young American soldiers, they would never see home again.

Imagine the inconsolable suffering of a parent who had to bury their child, the loss felt by a youngster who would never grow up to know their mother or father, or the promise of a life cut short by war and conflict.

So this Memorial Day weekend, when you’re perturbed that you have to wear a mask, upset that you can’t get a haircut, or outraged that you can’t go to a ballgame, take a few moments to remember the name etched on that gravestone in front of you.

That is real sacrifice – and it should never be forgotten.