Interesting how our memories are shaped by events in our impressionable years. Don’t believe me? Just listen to the favorite stories people tell. They are often from those years.
From the time I was 16 until I was 20, Memorial Day marked the first busy weekend of the summer restaurant season in Fenwick Island, Delaware. It also marked the unofficial beginning of summer, although we typically had a couple of weeks of school left. The weeks prior to that weekend would be a short season of getting back into the routine, of new employees learning the job, of preparing for a 3 month endless barrage of long lines of vacationers.
At the time, we simply saw this as a means to an end – a way to make money to help with our education and important things like gas so we could scoot around in our cars with our girlfriends. However, we were in the service industry, and while we were serving to earn an income, nevertheless we were serving.
What we didn’t comprehend at the time was that our elders were shaping our character during those impressionable years. If we were fortunate (like I was), those folks understood the responsibility they had in that work. They understood that we weren’t all just doing a job - we were learning to contribute, to work together, sometimes with people we didn’t even like.
It took me a while to understand the value in this work, and by a while, I mean like a majority of my adulthood. It was much later in life before I understood the value of service, before I came to the realization that it is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) things we can do. We start this work as a youth, perhaps in a restaurant, and we continue it for the rest of our lives in one way or another.
Service. That is really the heart of what we celebrate today. On this day in particular, we remember those who served at the expense of their own lives. It is an aspiration we can all aspire to – to serve, without regard for our own lives, for the betterment of those around us. Most of us won’t give to the extent of those men and women we remember today, but all of us can give.
THAT is at least one takeaway from Memorial Day. We don't simply remember what those folks gave, we remember what they taught us, and we live in the light of that memory. For that, we have many to thank.
