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.