Memorial Day

Greetings from the pact,

It’s too easy to forget this kind of obligation.  You didn’t sign any contract, never saw any details, the expectations were never explained to you.  It’s complicated that way.

But the contract is there.  It’s not written in expensive legalese on certified documents, witnessed and notarized, made official by affixing red wax seals, or embossed stamps.

But it is a binding compact.  A deal. 

I have figured out that the contract is easy for most of us to forget, ignore, and worse, to violate.  We have been separated from the reality of it.

It’s harder to ignore the contract when your Dad was in the military, or your brother is over in Iraq, or you live just outside a Marine base or a cemetery.  Or when you are in line to get breakfast.

When I met Travis Mills I was in line to get breakfast. 

I introduced myself and met his father in law and we talked while we waited.   Travis makes a significant first impression.  He is busting with life.  He is brimming with energy and enthusiasm, even in the most mundane moments.  He looks at you like he can’t wait to tell you something.

“I’m just a regular guy trying to get by.” he said to me, a humble way of deflecting words like ‘courageous’.   He has a smile that makes me envious.  Whatever is bubbling inside him is bigger than any challenges that have come his way. 

Not many soldiers survive if they are standing on an IED when it explodes.  Even fewer survive if the explosion tears off their arms and legs.  From the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, you can count those survivors on one hand.  Travis is one of those five.

I have talked to Travis a few times now and the impression is the same.  He feels like he is incredibly lucky.  Blessed that he survived to raise his daughter, Chloe, and spend the rest of his life with his wife.  Lucky to live out what he believes is his purpose.

The doctors told Travis it would take two years to get to a point where he could function without his arms and legs.  Clearly those standards were set for someone else.  He devoured the therapy, strapped on his new arms and legs, and clawed his way back into his life.  He has been striding forward every day since.  The courage he shows honors what he has been given, and honors the other side, what might have been.  The fate that was dealt to other soldiers who won’t come home to raise their daughters.

We have this compact to remember them.  The people who stepped up, for whatever reason, and put themselves between us and harm.  The ones who understood the risk and took it anyway and didn’t live the rest of their lives.

There will be flags fluttering in cemeteries, in parades, in windows, on cars.  More of them than usual today because many of us want to remind ourselves and our neighbors about the deal we made.

These people who made the deal with us. They jump out of planes, and sit in dangerous holes, and walk on roads filled with devices aimed to kill them, and they wait and wait.  They teeter on the edge of the blade, knowing that today could be the day it takes them.

Travis was just doing his job. Third tour in Iraq, he was leading his men in an advance position, on a road that had already been swept for mines, and he set his pack down on a bomb that was designed to turn him into someone we honor on Memorial Day.

But we have gotten better at saving the heroes on the battlefield, and the result is this: ten years ago a guy like Travis gets shredded by a mine, he doesn’t make it home alive.  He becomes one of the millions who we remember today.  But maybe not every day.

So Travis continues to serve us. 

He reminds us to remember the vets who come home injured and maimed from battle, and help their families too.  He inspires other men and women who come home broken.  And he serves to remind us of the men and women who didn’t make it. 

The contract is written in our memories of those we loved, and those we respect, who served on our behalf.  You see the words in the flag, carved on headstones, listed on monuments.  You get the intent of the covenant every time you see someone in uniform salute as the flag goes by.  You would feel it if you listened to Travis Mills tell you why he went back for a third tour. You know what the deal was.

It says that we will honor the memory of those who died in service to our country.  We will respect their sacrifice, their gift to us, and pay our part in return.  Today is a day when the contract gets unrolled where we can see it, but it’s up to us to live up to the agreement every day.

Hope this finds you living up to it,

David

PS: To know more about Travis Mills and what he is doing to make a positive difference for others, please visit his webpage:  http://www.travismills.org/

Copyright © 2014 David Smith