I have a stressful life.
Work is demanding, home is demanding.
Quite regularly things go horribly wrong and must be addressed. I have little money and lots of bills and I
can go on for days complaining about my life and the things I wish would be different. Then – a day like today arrives. June 6th. 68 years after THE June 6th that would forever shape history and the
world as we knew it. The day that
forever puts me in my place with a smack across the face and a yell, “Your
problems are shit.”
Historians have been studying this day for decades. There’s nothing I can say on a dumb blog that
would contribute in any way to the billions of conversations about that day. I won’t even try.
D-Day has always been an event that has held an extreme
significance to me. It’s recognized,
sure, throughout the world and you will read articles about it for a day or
so every year. I see it mentioned on the
news briefly and Facebook posts here and there.
I have never thought it was enough.
June 6th should be as big as July 4th. There should be fireworks. There should be parades. There is not enough done. There is never enough done.
My grandfathers served.
I don’t know if they were there.
I don’t even know if they were serving at that time. Neither spoke much about that time in their
lives to me. It was always something I
wished they would, but something I didn’t feel comfortable asking about. It really doesn’t matter if they were there
on that day or not. Serving alone places
them on a level that I infinitely respect.
A level far above me as a man and a citizen.
Every year this day makes me look inward. It is guaranteed that I will spend this day,
June 6th, every single year, obsessing about if I could have done
what they did. And every year I conclude
that I am not the man that any of them were.
Not even close. I’m ok with that.
This is the day that makes me more proud to be an American
than any other. In a time where this nation
is falling apart, where greed and corruption run rampant within business and
politics. Where the economy is still not
recovering as people hoped it would. Where
more people know the names of the Kardashians than know the name of the Speaker
of the House. Where jobs are scarce and
money is tight. Where privacy is
disappearing and the rich and powerful take more and more from the rest of us. Within a country that is consistently adding
more things to worry about than be proud of, this is the day that makes me
proud.
Because those men fought.
Those men fought and many more men and women, just like them, continue to fight. They are the reason
to be proud of America.
I don’t know if I could do what they did and continue to do
on a daily basis. I guess I’ll never
know. What I do know, however, is they
are out there. They were on the beaches
in 1944 and they are all over the globe today.
Their legacy will forever live on.
My thanks and infinite respect will never be enough. There’s nothing I can ever do to pay them
back. They are the absolute best among
us whether they want to believe that or not.
They are the reason that my kids can live the lives that they do. They are the reason that I can live the life
that I do.
How dare I complain about it?
-C
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