always remember | never forget

The U.S. shares celebrations on this day along with Great Britain, France, Australia and Canada. All who also commemorate the veterans of WWI and WWII on or around Nov 11.

For Canada it is Remembrance Day, while Britain has Remembrance Sunday which is the second Sunday in November. In Europe, Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries it is common to observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. every November 11th.

Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries wear poppies to remember those who died in war. Wearing of the poppy actually started with an American school teacher, but became a symbol of WWI because of the poem "In Flanders Field" by Canadian, John McCrae.

Then and now our world has experienced the devastation and divisiveness wars can take on its people and our nature. For those born and raised in other places, moving to other countries, our loyalties are played upon, deeply wounding and affecting so much.

Let us all take this day to recognize the significance of those who serve. Their bravery won us our freedom and our lives. Peace to us all.

Writer and actor Nick Cave when asked how he deals with the death and grief replied: 

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

Some things in life are non-negotiable.

[Call the veterans crisis hotline +1-800-273-8255 or text '273TALK' to 839863.]