Lest We Forget

Today is Remembrance Day, so of course my thoughts are with my grandfathers, who both fought in World War II, and who are both gone now. Each year in the week leading up to November 11th, as I watch the variety of TV specials dedicated to those who have fought and died in our many--too many--wars, I think about my grandfathers and all of the things I should have asked them. Should have, but never did.

It's an interesting thing, asking someone to talk about war. I think by the time I was old enough to understand what war meant, and that my grandfathers had both experienced it personally, I was also old enough to sense that many people don't want to talk about their war experiences. Even though my Grandpa Spidel made a career out of the military, and even though the walls of my grandparent's basement rec room were covered in the framed memorabilia of Grandpa's time in the Air Force, I can't remember him ever talking about the War. His time on the DEW Line during the Cold War, sure. Stories about meeting buddies in the Mess for coffee and camaraderie, okay. Exciting details about how, as a radar officer, he would track Santa's progress each Christmas Eve so all the kids on the base would know exactly when they had to be in bed and asleep, of course! But the War? Never. The closest he ever got--in front of me, anyway--was a reference once to a friend who had been a POW in a Japanese camp during the last months of the war. But I can't remember him ever speaking about his own war experiences. Not once.

Although I had a different relationship with my Grandpa Garrett, it was much the same. I knew he had been to the War, had served in the army and been on the European front. I even knew that he had come home with shrapnel embedded in his skull. (Years later we wondered if that had anything to do with the early onset of his Alzheimer's.) But Grandpa Garrett never spoke to me about his wartime experiences, and I never asked. And now, like Grandpa Spidel, he's gone, and so is my chance to find out what they went through.

War is still everywhere, but in Canada we are so very fortunate to not have it impact each and every one of us directly, and on a daily basis. The families of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and around the world live every day with the consequences of war, but most of us can go for days at a time--if we keep the news off--and not have war touch us. War is not real for most of us. It's something we encounter on TV, and in movies and video games. It's not in our pantries or our closets, and it's not at our dining room tables or in our beds at night. And for that privilege I stop today to think about my grandfathers, and all the other grandfathers and fathers and uncles and brothers, mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends, who have made it possible for me to sometimes forget just how lucky I am to live in a place where I am free. Free to remember, free to forget, free to protest, free to speak and to write. Free.