Remembering for more than just a day

In Flanders Fields
London, ON
November 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Today we put our regular lives on hold for a couple of minutes so we could remember the sacrifices made by so many in wars in the distant past as well as more recent conflicts.

Like my late uncle, who flew C-47 Dakotas for the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, and luckily made it back. Like so many others, who did not.

If we're being honest with ourselves, it seems like an inadequate gesture. Two minutes for a lifetime of twisted memories.

Or a life not lived at all.

We ask the members of our military to literally put their lives on the line so that we may enjoy freedom, then blithely forget about them for the other 364 days of the year.

Or we loudly proclaim our patriotism on special days, or when the camera is on, but fail to follow through in those in-between moments that matter so much more. I don't have answers today. But I'd like to think Canadians - and, frankly, citizens of any other freedom-loving country, meaning all of us - will come up with something better than periodic pomp and circumstance, followed by months of quiet ignorance.

We owe them more than that.

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