Remembering the Moment on the Stairs

What most people remember of the movie We Were Soldiers are the battle scenes.  It’s real and bloody and scary and there is a lot of death and destruction.  When telling a male friend of mine that I don’t/can’t watch this movie ever again, he reiterated exactly that.  “Ya, it’s pretty gory.”

I didn’t even remember that part.

What I do remember is watching it and becoming near dehydrated through the tears.  But what made me that way, what caused the ugly, snotty, not-movie-pretty-tears, had nothing to do with the battle scenes.

It had everything to do with a different scene.  A scene at home, where Mel Gibson’s character’s wife hears the doorbell.  And walking down the stairs she sees the letter at her door and she almost falls.  And she is crying and telling her kids to go back up stairs when she gets to the door, only to find out the letter is not for her.  And it begins the storyline of this character being the deliverer of these letters to each one of the wives as their husbands are killed in battle.  At least, that’s how I remember the scene and I can’t bring myself to watch it again to confirm I remember it right.

So when asked by the media this past month what Remembrance Day means to me, as a military spouse,  that’s what came to my mind.  Not the services.  Not the Poppy’s,  wreaths, cenotaphs or memorials.

It’s that moment on the stairs.

Because if you are a soldier, it will mean something else, and I’m sure have much more to do with the battles you’ve seen and the friends you lost.  And if you’ve never had any connection to the military, I am sure it is different then too.  But our lives dictate what impacts us the hardest emotionally and, well, this to me is it.  It’s my worst nightmare.  It’s the reason I keep the front entrance of my home cleaned when my dh is overseas.  It’s what Remembrance Day means to me.

To me, every death in battle, ever life remembered from the First World War until now, has it’s own moment on the stairs.  Each soldier represents at least one family member back home who had to get that letter.  Or that call.  Or that notification party at their door in the middle of the night.

There’s a father who received the registered letter from the army.  There’s a mother who had to look up to see uniformed men getting out of their car and walking to her house.  There’s a wife who woke up to the 2 a.m. ring at the door.  They cried.  They fell down in grief.  They stared in shock. 

Each casualty in battle means that someone, somewhere was going to be met with what was a reality of their worst nightmare since the moment their loved ones boots hit the ground.  Most of us have relatives who lived with that fear in one of the world wars.  Many of us have friends who are living with that fear right now while their loved one is in Afghanistan. 

Remembrance Day is by definition not about us who are still here.  Or about my soldier and the many others  who came home.  It’s about the thousands of Stairs Moments that have been experienced in this country since the first world war.

 There are ribbons for almost every worthwhile cause you can think of.  Even though they are all worthwhile and meaningful, whether it’s Breast Cancer or HIV/AIDS or Organ Donation, we all have those causes that mean more to us than others.  I realize that Yellow Ribbons are mine.  I can’t expect everyone to feel as strongly about the meaning behind them as I do.

But I do believe that we all, just by living in this country, have an obligation of gratitude to those who have served to gain the freedoms we have here. 

Yellow ribbons have become quite ‘fashionable’ in the past 8 years.  You see them everywhere.  Yet they need to mean something more than a magnet on your car.   The should mean that you take the time on November 11th to show up to a Service, somewhere, and take the time to Remember.  And more importantly, take the time to teach your kids to Remember.  It’s not a political statement.  It’s a tribute.  It’s making sure that there is a legacy left by those who went before us.

Remembrance Day isn’t just a holiday.  Thousands of men and women have died in Service to their country for you to have this Thursday off.

I challenge you to go.  And think of those Moments on the Stairs.  Those were families, just like yours.   It’s the least that we, who live with the freedom those moments gave us, can do for them.

Veterans Week: Veterans Recollect

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