Search This Blog

...a glimpse into life on Vancouver Island, needle felting, photography, food, gardening, etcetera...etcetera
"Happiness always looks small when you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and at once you learn how big and precious it is."
Maxim Gorky

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Remembrance...

I wrote this last year  and thought I would re post it since I still find the words to hold true.
Remember, on this day, those who made the sacrifices for our freedom.

I have never known war in my life.
I have only been witness to it through the news and stories told in books and movies.
Some of my relatives fought in wars, but I never knew them and only saw pictures of them as young soldiers in uniforms.
I am in great turmoil to hear that the most popular game gift this season is a bloody, violent interactive video complete with assaults on innocent civilians.
I am disturbed to know that people play the game of paintball as a recreational activity.
When I think of November 11th I am filled with thoughts like these:
I am not the young lad who watched his comrade fall and join the ranks of lifeless bodies on the muddy field.
I am not the naked, young girl running down the road, burned by a bomb.
I am not the face in the black and white photo in the museum for the Killing Fields.
Nor am I the veiled housewife who is killed by a roadside bomb after buying oranges in the market mid day.
I was not shot trying to jump over a wall that divided a nation.
My race did not land me in a box car headed to Auschwitz.
Alcohol and heroin, I don't need, to exercise my demons in the middle of the night.
I do not walk with a cane or artificial limbs and neither is a wheelchair my only transport.
My religion did not create a Peace Line in my neighborhood.
I was not the one who marched in the rain and slept in the filth for weeks on end.
Or looked into the eyes of my neighbor as I fired the rifle on the battlefields of North Carolina.
I was never treated like an animal because of the tone of my skin.
I am not the old man, standing with the last of his comrades, remembering friends lost.
I am a Canadian. I am 47 and have only known peace and freedom.
I have choices.
I honor those who died or suffered trying to make changes in their world and mine.
I have never known war and hope I never will.

No comments: