I salute you

This past Sunday, as the JBC choir has for the last who-knows-how-many years, we sang the “Salute to the Armed Forces,” a medley of all the songs for the different branches of the armed forces. I personally love singing this song. The songs are fun, the words and rhythms are so different from anything else I have the opportunity to sing, and for some reason, singing that medley just makes me happy.

But my favorite part, above all, is when the men and women who have served in the military hear the familiar chords of their song and stand up. Some of them sing along. Some of them smile back at us. Some of them jump up and down (like Chuck, our lone Coast Guard guy .  . . until this year when some other younger guy also stood up!). Most of them seem a little taken aback by the applause that always happens when they stand.

This past Sunday, as I stood there singing those words, looking those former soldiers in the face, my mind wandered to what they’d been like as young men. Most of them are older now, veterans of World War II. There are a few who served in Korea and Vietnam, maybe some Gulf War vets, and a few who served during peace time. But as I looked out over the crowd and sang the Army’s song (Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail. . . ), I thought about my veteran, my Grandpa Marion who served in World War II somewhere in France.

I think about how he used to tell me that his hair got shot off in the war and I believed him. I think about the young, dashing man I see in the pictures I have of him during his training and enlistment, the framed newspaper story I have about him and his 2 brothers, the only sons of a divorced woman, all serving in various capacities during the war: Grandpa in Europe, Calvin in the Pacific (I think), and I have no idea where Henry was. I think about the young bride and son my grandfather left at home, the house she bought while he was gone, the house that sits empty now, except for all the memories that fill it. I think of the love letters he sent to her from his foreign battlefield—letters she tied up in ribbon and hid in his army footlocker in their crowded attic. Letters she burned some years after he died and before her first stroke, I guess because she wanted to preserve those special memories, to keep at least that one part of their relationship between them, private and safe. I think about all the things I wanted to ask him about his service, about life, about everything—and the conversations we might have had had he not died when I was 13 years old. I think of his request in those final days for the pastor to read from Revelation, about a God who would wipe away every tear and a place where there was no pain and no death. I think of the woman who stood by his side for more than 40 years, my grandma, the one person who ever told me that I took her breath away. I think of how proud I am to say that my grandpa served in the Army and fought in that war, which soon turns to thoughts of how grateful I am to every man or woman who has ever served.

The older I get, the more I understand that freedom comes at a cost—one I probably don’t fully comprehend. So, thank you to all who have served and those who will.

(And thank you, God, that I don’t have to grieve as the world does.)