The Day for Memories

I'd wish you a happy holiday, but there are 651,031 reasons not to. WRITTEN & ANIMATED by PETER MOORE

THIS MEMORIAL-DAY MORNING I TEXTED my niece’s husband. He served as a member of the U.S. special forces. I wanted to let him know I was thinking of him, and all of the comrades he lost during his service to our nation. He wrote back that today, he honored 190 people who served with him, and never returned home. When he married my niece, they followed tradition, and set a table with a single, empty chair in the banquet hall, to honor those who wouldn’t make it to the ceremony that day. I remain haunted by that empty place setting. We might have set 651,031 of them, to occupy their true space in the history of our nation, and in the hearts of the people they left behind.