Honoring the sacrifice of many

Yesterday we went to a service at Denver’s Fort Logan National Cemetery in honor of Memorial Day. It was the first time I had ever been to such a service on Memorial Day. In the past the day has meant family barbecues, the Bolder Boulder (an annual 10K race in Boulder) and picnics in the mountains. Memorial Day meant more to me this year. Mike and I spent last Memorial Day in Normandy, France, touring the D-Day beaches and wandering through the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. Somehow, after seeing that, the sacrifice of those who have served -- and continue to serve -- our country is more meaningful to us. We wanted to commemorate Memorial Day this year in the way, however small on our part, it was meant to be commemorated.

The service at Fort Logan was touching. Several thousand people attended, one of the largest crowds that had ever gathered for the Memorial Day service at the cemetery. I talked to a woman sitting behind me whose husband served in the Army during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He died about 10 years ago and is buried at Fort Logan. We also saw a friend at the service, a Marine who served in World War II. He lost his wife a few years ago, and she’s buried at Fort Logan.

Several dozen people at the service rose to their feet when asked to stand in honor of a loved one who had served in the military and had died since last Memorial Day. (The local media took that to mean all of those people lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, but those in attendance represented many current and former service members who had died in the last year, not just those serving in the current conflict.)

I wanted to take some flowers to place somewhere at Fort Logan, where 90,000 servicemen, servicewomen and their families are buried. Before the service I picked up a bunch of white carnations at the grocery store, not knowing exactly where they’d end up. I asked God to show us where to put them. As we walked through the cemetery, two gravestones caught my attention. One of the gravestones said, “Well done my good and faithful servant,” a reference to a story Jesus tells in Matthew 25. I split up the carnations and put half in front of that gravestone.

The other gravestone said, “A man after God’s own heart,” a reference to ancient Israel’s King David but a sentiment a lot of believers wish to have said about them. A woman was kneeling and crying before the second gravestone. I approached her, told her the words on the gravestone touched us and asked if we could place some flowers before it. She smiled through her tears. ‘Daddy would love that,” she said. I looked at the dates on the gravestone. The woman’s father had just died last fall. This was her first Memorial Day without him, and she was obviously struggling.

I can only hope our small gesture of placing a few white carnations at the foot of his gravestone gave her a little bit of comfort on a difficult day.