Remembrance.

For as long as I can remember, I have gone to a ceremony for Remembrance Day. Most often, it was one done through a school. I am not sure when they started to mean more than getting out of class and going to an assembly to me, but somewhere along the line, I realized what that assembly was actually for. I remember one ceremony in particular. I think I was in Grade 11, and as part of our social studies class, we were required to participate in the ceremony. We rehearsed and performed a sort of "re-enactment" of one of the battles in World War II.  All I remember is the sound of gunfire and having to pretend I was dead in front of our whole school. I remember thinking how awful it would have been to be surrounded by real gunfire. What would those brave soldiers have been thinking as they were hearing that gunfire?  What were those soldiers' brave families thinking as their husbands and wives and sons and daughters were hearing that gunfire?

The ceremony that moved me the most, however, is the one I went to when I was newly pregnant with E. I was working as a supply teacher at a K-12 school. That day, I was sitting in the front of the gym with a Kindergarten class. I don't know if it was the hormones coursing through my veins, but I cried through that whole ceremony. It finally hit me what those sacrifices truly meant. I thought about the little baby I was carrying, and how every soldier was at one point a little baby growing in his or her mother's womb. And I cried. One little girl reached over and held my hand when she saw me crying, and that only made me cry more. There I was in a gym with over one thousand 5-18 year olds, secretly pregnant as we hadn't told anyone and I wasn't showing yet, and I was bawling, and a sweet five year old girl reached out and held my hand.

I don't have any family that were/is in the military that I know of except for my mother's grandfather, a distant relative on my father's side, and mrblueberry's grandfather. I don't know what it feels like to have someone close to me make that ultimate sacrifice. I saw on the news today about a Canadian soldier who had been killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. It was his funeral. I saw his wife carrying his little girl, wrapped in a blanket, and I broke down. He was deployed when she was ten days old. They showed one of the newborn photos they had done with her. At least he got to hold her, and smell her, and she will have those photos. But she will never have her dad hold her when she skins her knee. She will never have her dad look at her with proud eyes as she graduates. She will never have her dad walk her down the aisle, or hold her newborn baby. That whole family paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Remembrance Day means more to me now that I am a mother. As I snuggle E, and my new nephew, it truly hits me. I understand what those families lost more than I ever did. My heart goes out to every family who has felt that sacrifice, and to every family who has waited for their soldier to come home to them. Our veterans and military sacrificed a lot for us to have what we have. And sometimes, I wonder if my generation and the generations after me truly appreciate that. I hope I am wrong. I hope that they do. I hope that they realize that the sacrifice does not always come in war; often, it comes after when the soldier comes home. I hope that they realize what it means when we wear that poppy.