What We Carry
A Civilian's Reflection on Memorial Day
As Memorial Day approaches, I find myself wrestling with how to speak about it—not as a veteran, but as someone who has always stood on the outside of that life, watching, listening, and learning. I've never worn the uniform. Health kept me from that path. But the absence doesn't mean I don't feel the weight of the day.
Memorial Day is not a celebration. It’s not the start of summer, or a day for sales and slogans. It’s a day of mourning. A day to reckon with sacrifice—not abstractly, but specifically. It's about lives lost in service. Names etched in stone. Families whose tables will never be full again.
I’ve spent time listening to veterans, reading their stories, and trying to understand what this day means to them. One thing is clear: it is not their day. Veterans Day is. Memorial Day belongs to the fallen—and to those who carry their memory.
And those carriers aren’t just fellow service members. They’re the moms and dads, the kids, the best friends, the partners who go on living with the echo of someone who’s gone. They are civilians too.
This year, instead of barbecue plans, I’m thinking about how to hold space. How to slow down enough to remember someone I never met. How to honor them without pretending I understand the full cost. Maybe that looks like reading a name on a gravestone. Maybe it means supporting a Gold Star family. Maybe it’s just pausing the noise.
What I do know is that it’s not about performative patriotism. It’s about presence. It’s about respect. It’s about asking better questions—Who are we remembering? What did they leave behind? How do we keep their memory from fading into a blur of bunting and hashtags?
Jason Lee Dunham - Died protecting fellow Marines from a grenade in Iraq.
Jesse LeRoy Brown - His last known words were, “Tell Daisy I love her.”
Mitchell Red Cloud Jr. - Exposed himself to enemy fire in defense of fellow soldiers in Korea.
Thomas W. Bennett - A medic who died trying to reach a wounded soldier in Vietnam.
Robert James Miller - Laid down his life in combat to save 23 others in Afghanistan.
And countless —sometimes nameless— others…
I may not have served, but I can still stand witness. I can still say: I see the cost. I see the silence.
Jay Vissers
Writer, and citizen committed to remembering.