As I write this on May 24, 2020, the country is certainly in a time of sacrifice, so I have been thinking a lot about how each generation experiences the defining event of theirs differently.

I have been considering separation, and how hundreds of thousands of men and women in the first part of the 1940’s were miles and miles away from the ones they loved.  And when those boys were in their final moments they probably longed for one last loving gaze from a family member.  The stories that have gutted me the most over the past two months were those of families who only longed to be with their loved ones as they succumbed to this virus.  Separation is a sacrifice.

Then we can also consider the sacrifice of comfort.  When I was in high school I borrowed a big desk from Anna’s house for a high school production.  As I cleaned out the drawers I found the family ration booklets.  Little stamps for items such as butter, flour, sugar…who tells an Irish family they can’t have butter?  But they did without, and knowing my grandmother, they still ate well.  I’m sure as they read Bud’s letters describing the good food that they Army was providing, they felt relief that their sacrifice was benefiting him.  Today I stood in line at the grocery store for twenty minutes.  Lack of comfort is a sacrifice.

After Bud died, the immense loss never healed.  The Byrnes family never recovered.  I keep hearing the term, “the new normal” thrown around during this pandemic, and for those who suffer the loss of life, property, permanent income, there is no normal.  For my family, the “new normal” was private pain and moving on.  They chose not to share the good things about my uncle, so as not to relive the pain of his absence.  Moving on is a sacrifice.

On August 31, 2018, Lauren Byrnes (Greg’s wife) and I had the honor of attending the funeral service for Robert Violet, a member of Bud’s crew in Wilton, Maine.  The Violet family had chosen the 75th anniversary of the crash for the event, and I knew that I had to be there if I was welcome.  Lynn Violet, Robert’s niece, and I had corresponded the summer that the crew was identified (2017), but then our emails stopped.  I found out in the summer of 2018 that she had been sending me emails throughout the previous year that kept getting returned to her.  I reached out to her in early August to inquire about the funeral, and we were welcomed graciously.

The Violet family had arranged for a graveside ceremony, and there sat the picture you see at the top of this page.  (I still can’t believe how many homes that picture hung in all over the US, and all of the families who grieved over the boys that were pictured in it.) Robert Violet is not in the picture – his family explained that he was probably the one taking it.  It was a brief, but beautiful ceremony and we were invited back to Lynn’s sister’s house for lunch.  We learned that Robert’s parents struggled much like our grandparents did.  Lynn and her siblings knew very little about her uncle.  I shared the binder of letters that Bud had written home, and the class ring that was found at the crash site.  We shared stories and wonderings, and marveled that our families were able to experience this incredible reunion with these family members that we had never met.

We hopefully will never experience the kind of sacrifice that the Violet, Byrnes and so many others have had to endure.  On this very unique Memorial Day, in the year 2020, I am thinking about the fact that yes, we are enduring separation, lack of comfort, and we are being forced to move on in an unknown future.

What we don’t have to sacrifice is connection, or empathy, or awareness of others, or most importantly, our stories.  God Bless those who sacrificed their lives so that we can have those things today.