Don't Celebrate Memorial Day, Honor It

The Sweetest Mother's Day Gift!

Monday is so much more than a day off work. I enjoy a BBQ and celebrating my freedom as much as the next patriot, but we have many days to do that. We are blessed to have days like the 4th of July or Thanksgiving dedicated to celebrating and remembering our history and the freedoms we’ve been given.

Monday simply is not one of them.

On Monday, we honor the fallen. Those brave men and women who gave their last full measure of devotion are not an excuse to break out the grill or begin wearing white. They deserve so much more than that.

As a military spouse, I cringe at the years Memorial Day passed as simply a holiday. I cringe about the time I wished someone a “Happy Memorial Day” as I waited in line, armed with hot dogs and hamburgers. There is nothing happy about a day commemorating the dead.

We can and should be proud of their sacrifice. We should honor and support their families members left behind. We should strive to make sure that we raise children as honorable as those who are willing to give their all for others. We must keep their stories alive.

I now have seen the deep cost that military families have paid. Even in times of peace, there is inherent danger in being a military member. During war time, that pain is ever present. I’ve held children who have lost their father. I’ve stood in Arlington and surveyed the thousands upon thousands of graves. I have wept at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and gazed upon the oil still drifting up from Pearl Harbor and wondered how the families of those who fell, who are entombed in sunken ships they served in, survived their grief.

I have seen the deep pain this day was built to commemorate, and I ache when it is casually overlooked in favor of a celebration of the beginning of summer.

Memorial Day is not just about the freedom we’ve been given but about the high, high price it has been bought at. It is a day to stop, survey the beauty, and recognize the cost.

So please, this Memorial Day, stop and pass down the legacy of the fallen. I encourage you to come alongside those in grief. Find a way to support Gold Star Families. Folds of Honor is an amazing organization and I’ve seen firsthand the way they’ve helped the widows and orphans whose lives bear the mark of our freedoms.

Tell your children what and why Monday is a day off work. Savor the time you have as a family and do something together to serve. Lay wreaths on graves. Pray together for those grieving. Share about the fallen. Find a way to remember the day for what it is and to honor those who have paid the ultimate cost.

For information on Folds of Honor, click here.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

flag Memorial Day

Bailey Suzio

Bailey Suzio’s journey started out in Michigan, where she grew up as the oldest of 10 (yes, ten) children, and has led her to Hawaii with her husband and their two dogs. She has greatly enjoyed this opportunity to explore the history and culture of the Hawaiian islands. In addition to her love for the Lord and her family, her great passions are coffee and collecting an exorbitant amount of books. Bailey has spent the last few years teaching and working with a local church. She writes at http://thethinplace.net/ about her life, faith, and infertility journey.

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

Memories of My Grandma Live On

In: Grief

Be intentional. Take the picture. Create memories. Because even when we think we have all the time in the world, one day it will slip away. Sadly, this is exactly what happened to my grandma and me. While I was growing up, my dad and his parents had a strained relationship, and they were estranged for about the first five years of my life. Thankfully, they reconciled, and my grandparents and I finally had the opportunity to establish a much-anticipated relationship. Though I was never able to form the same closeness with them as I had with my maternal grandparents,...

Keep Reading

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

In: Grief, Motherhood

Girl's bedroom with posters on the wall and toys on the bed

It was a Sunday evening. I was alone, scrolling through Netflix, searching for something, anything, to fill the quiet. Then I stumbled upon a documentary I had no clue existed, called All the Empty Rooms. After reading the description, my heart immediately went out to all the parents who contributed to this film, and to the man behind it, Steve Hartman, whose compassionate heart radiates in every frame. One statement he said hit me like a freight train: “What we need to talk about is the child that’s not here anymore.” Period. Powerful truth. Curiously, I started watching. Then I...

Keep Reading

Drink The Good Wine, Mama. You've Earned It!

Journal

Drink The Good Wine, Mama. You've Earned It!

You Are So Loved

Faith

Don’t Celebrate Memorial Day, Honor It

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Bailey Suzio

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Memories of My Grandma Live On

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

Don’t Celebrate Memorial Day, Honor It

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Memories of My Grandma Live On

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like