Kitchen Table Wisdom

As I was growing up, Memorial Day meant watching a parade march past a field dotted with family stones and family plots, red geraniums resting on the graves of loved ones, and the lonely sound of taps shimmering through the air with a solemnity I did not yet understand.

Not really.

As a child, it felt like tradition —it’s what our family did—flags waving in the breeze, folding chairs lined along the roadside, music drifting through the warm spring air.

My Great Uncle Dob — who survived Pearl Harbor — was, to me, a red flower on a grave, faded photographs in an album, and stories passed around the kitchen table. I was too young for any of it to mean more.

Until it became personal.

The day I turned twenty, I stepped onto a bus and waved goodbye to my mother and grandmother. I had joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, and basic training awaited me. I remember the excitement — the thrill of leaving home and stepping into a world much bigger than the one I had ever known.

And I remember my mother’s eyes.

The tears she tried to hide.
The fear she couldn’t.
I wanted her to be happy for me, but I didn’t understand her grief.

Years later, I would stand in her place — at another bus, on another day — watching my own son leave for basic training. He had joined the Navy. This time, I was the one swallowing hard, trying to be brave, trying not to let him see the way my heart twisted inside my chest.

Life has a way of circling back on us.
Sometimes it feels like karma.
Sometimes it feels like grace.

I traveled to Chicago to watch him graduate. I saw the pride in his step, the confidence in his shoulders. And then, one more time, I stood on a platform as he prepared to leave — this time for his duty station in Japan.

He saw the tears shimmering in my eyes and pulled me into a hug.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he whispered. “I don’t believe in God. When I die, I die. Nothing to worry about.”

They were not the comfort he thought they would be. I knew differently. He would need faith. He would need God — and the Savior who had carried me through every valley of my life, including my brief stint in the military.

There is only so much a mother can do to prepare her child for the world. We give them tools, wisdom, warnings, and love. But eventually, they step onto the bus, or the ship, or the plane — and the rest is out of our hands.

So, I did the only thing left for a mother to do.

I prayed.

Three days later, the United States declared war against Iraq, and my world changed.

The USS Kitty Hawk, my son’s ship, was already in the Gulf. I didn’t know if he was on board or still in Japan waiting for it to return. There was no way to reach him. No way to know.

It would be months before he was allowed to call home.

Every chance I got, I watched the news. Reporters broadcast from the deck of his ship, and I scanned every face I could see, searching for some sign that he was okay.

And I prayed harder.

I began sending care packages — snacks, letters, little pieces of home — and tucked inside were small pamphlets about belief, about why there is a God. It was all I could do.

Then one night, in the quiet hours before dawn, my phone rang.

It was my son.

“Mom,” he said, “don’t send me any more of those booklets. I found a better book to read.”

My heart sank.

“What book are you reading?”

“I want you to guess, Mom.”

“Son, it’s three in the morning here. Too early for guessing games.”

He laughed softly.

“It’s the New Testament, Mom. I don’t know what took me so long. It’s awesome.”

And just like that, the fear that had been wrapped around my heart loosened its grip.

“That’s wonderful, son,” I whispered. “I’m happy for you.”

My prayers were being answered. God had been listening all along. He had placed my son exactly where I had asked — on a ship with young Christians who invited him to Bible study. At first, he went to escape the stress of war.

But little by little, the Word began to take root.

I never saw combat myself. I never went overseas. For me, the military was meant to be a stepping stone toward an education and a future. And in many ways, my son went into the military for the same reason — education. He didn’t want me to bear the cost of it.

I served in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard long enough to learn discipline, limits, and humility. I didn’t always feel like I measured up as a soldier, but what I learned there would shape me into a better leader later in life. My son learned a lifelong trade and was shaped into the man he is now.

I’ve come to believe the reasons we serve matter less than the fact that we serve at all. The difference between my son and me was not intent, but moment — peacetime for me, wartime for him. As his mother, I would understand that difference in a very personal way.

I am not someone who confuses faith with nationalism or places country above God. But service changes people. Even when a person comes home whole in body, something inside them has still crossed oceans most of us will never fully understand.

And war becomes personal when the face on the television screen could belong to your child.

After her brother deployed overseas, my daughter wrote an essay on what the war meant to her. Her answer was simple:

“It’s personal.”

She was right.

This is what Memorial Day means to me.

It is not only about remembering those who never made it home — though we honor them with reverence and gratitude.

It is also about remembering the ones who did come home carrying stories they rarely tell and burdens we may never fully understand.

It is about the mothers who wave goodbye.
The fathers who stand a little straighter.
The families who learn to sleep with the lights on.
The ones who wait.
The ones who pray.
The ones who love a service member enough to let them go.

And it is about the God who watches over every child — even when they do not yet know they are being watched over.

This Memorial Day, I remember all of them.

And I remember the night my son called from halfway around the world to tell me he had found the One who had already found him.

Maybe that is the only real wisdom I have to offer this Memorial Day:

Never stop praying.

Cathy D.