Two years ago, we returned from a conference in Canada later than we’d expected. It had flurried on us in Canada, because we had the good fortune to be in Ottawa in November. We got stuck in Chicago for four hours, weathering two broken planes and all manner of other very minor absurdities.
When we arrived in Birmingham it was just before 9 p.m. and our plans to be home and make dinner and all of that were ruined. Also, it had snowed in Birmingham in November. And a tiny little bit of it had stuck to the ground. In Birmingham in November.
So we went to the wonderful DeVinci’s Pizza, possibly for some sort of pasta. And at the end of the evening Mr. Day was standing at the counter, standing over a portrait of his confident, determined son. He thanked me for wearing the poppy on my lapel that I’d picked up in Canada because he’d lost his boy in the service.
And so I think of him, and my uncle who lost a leg in Vietnam, and my great-grandfather who saved mens lives as a medic in the ETO in World War II, and the two ladies of my generation who shipped off for Iraq and people known to me and unknown. They’ve all done far braver things and endured far more than most of us can conceive, because they have a sense of duty, a love of place, an understanding of comradeship that insisted they stand by the people next to them, standing in front of the rest of us, for the rest of us.
Perhaps the highest honors we can give someone willing to do that are gratitude and peace. They deserve both in short order and in abundant supply.
