On this Memorial Day, I count myself extremely lucky that I have *not* lost a loved one to combat. But today, I hold and remember all who have died in war, and those who mourn them.
My grandfather – “Papa” – was a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, serving most of his career in the Air Force. Sadly, he knew plenty who died in both of these wars. Each Memorial Day, he reminded us to remember these folks not for how they died, but for how they lived. And so I do.
Of course, I also remember him. When I was a young adult, coming of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I struggled to square the reverence for the U.S. military I had because of him with what I saw happening around the world in the name of America. It didn’t square at all.
When Papa died in 2006, my only regret was that I never knew how to talk to him about his work. I never got to ask him how he squared his experience with what he saw happening in our country and abroad after 9/11.
Many years later, I tried – in song – to imagine how that conversation might go. The result is the song That Good That I Can Do, featured on my forth-coming album, The One Who Remembers. Last night, as the sun set on a perfect blue sky, I snuck up to the roof to play this song, remembering him and in the belief that we can carry the “good” of those who have passed forward with us in our own lives.
