Memorializing Family

 

Today, Memorial Day in the United States, is one day set aside to honor those who died while in the line of duty in military service. A custom which began after the Civil War, when families decorated the graves of their lost loved ones—hence the original designation as Decoration Day—the day now also honors the memory of those who have fallen in subsequent wars and military engagements.

Though my husband's family includes many members through the generations who have served in the armed forces, they have very few relatives who have actually died while in service. But as I explore the family's collateral lines, I find more and more who had harrowing stories of service to share—or, more the case, didn't share those stories much farther than their own immediate family.

I've lately been exploring the Miller lines of possible siblings of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lidia Miller Gordon. In the extended family of one DNA match, I ran across an old news article concerning one such distant cousin, who had—finally, after five years of confinement—just been released from captivity as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict.

The newspaper report included one detail about those five years: the veteran's younger brother had enlisted, served, finished his tour of duty and returned home, all before his brother regained his freedom. If the news could have been shared with this brother in captivity, the family didn't want to do so, for so many reasons. While both brothers eventually lived to tell about their experiences, what a burden it must have been to suffer through. These types of stories need to be memorialized, too—not just hidden away in a newspaper article now long forgotten that only a genealogist would stumble upon.

Then, too, there are stories of military loss that were so traumatic at the time that those closest to the tragedy could not bring themselves to speak of it. Though even the thought may be painful for those who lived through the loss of their loved one in service, eventually it will become important to share those stories. The rest of us need to hear them, to be informed of them, to learn from them. Despite the pain. Despite the grief. We mourn with those who grieve—and gain a different perspective of what it was like to live through that loss. We never know until we are told. Share the story. Pass it on. That story is worth living through the generations.