Tomorrow is Memorial Day.
It is the unofficial start of summer, the culmination of a three day weekend that usually features picnics where people overindulge in barbecued food and beer, parades and fireworks.
But that is NOT what Memorial Day is all about.
Memorial Day was set aside to honor the brave men and women who served our country in the armed forces to preserve our freedom...and never made it home.
Freedom is not free.
Our service men and women in many cases paid the cost of freedom with their blood, sometimes making the supreme sacrifice: their lives for our country.
We take those freedoms for granted on a daily basis.
Some people, when they have run-ins with the law, claim that they now know what it is to live within a "police state," when it is patently clear that they know no such thing. A "police state" would never allow them to speak publicly in that manner.
Among some people, it has been fashionable for a very long time to mock patriotism and the armed forces, conveniently forgetting that it was the armed forces that have protected their very right to disagree, that men and women died for that right.
While it is true that no system of government is perfect, and for all of its flaws, ours is still the best that the world has to offer.
I do not seek to debate the righteousness of some of the wars our government has engaged in, although it is our right to do so.
I will state that the one constant factor has been that our brave men and women in the armed forces have served our country when called upon to do so, and have shed their blood on foreign soil, some dying far away from their homes and loved ones.
Memorial Day has a certain pathos for me.
I am the son of Eastern European refugees. Most of my family came to the United States after the Second World War. Tens of millions of civilians died in that horrific war; my mother and my aunt were incarcerated at Theresienstadt concentration camp. After the war, my parents' homelands fell behind the Iron Curtain. Millions fled to the west to escape Communist rule, only to be interned in refugee camps, waiting for years to get the go-ahead to come to the United States.
When my relatives were finally allowed to come to the United States, they got their green cards, found jobs, became contributing members of society and became citizens.
Some of them joined the armed forces, still not speaking English properly and with foreign accents. But they loved the country of their adoption so much that they were willing to fight and die for it.
And some DID die for it.
Hence the reason for the six American flags I fly year-round on my front lawn.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day.
There will be picnics, parties, parades and fireworks. But please, spare a few moments to remember the reason behind the day. And it is not unmanly to shed a few tears when "Taps" is played.
And pray for those brave men and women who never made it home.
Because freedom isn't free.
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