Remembrance Day
As I watched my five year old fall into line and march into school with her comrades, I was struck by an image. I hope this is the only circumstance which finds them marching together, heavy packs slung over their shoulders. How different is that image from those we see of young men and women lining up to board the airplanes that will take them to Afghanistan? The colors are different. The boots are for snow rather than the dust. But when I look at the faces from the pictures on the front of our Ottawa citizen today, many, many of them were not far removed from the morning school line in neighbourhoods across Canada.
Sacrifice is just that at any age, but surely, many of our war dead from the Afghanistan conflict were too young. Remembrance Day has always been a solemn time for me, but being a parent has given it a completely new dimension.
If you don’t connect those boys and girls lining up at school today so closely with our boys and girls in Kandahar, consider this. How young does the goal of service first take root? Not a few early teens will be entertaining thoughts of a life in the military.
So to all the parents of present or future service men and women, my thoughts are with you as well today. For the competing emotions of pride and fear must be truly overwhelming.
