#we remember

I saved your last voicemail in five places…

Just so I never lose the sound of your voice ~ the laugh and your jealousy over us being at the beach, while you baked in the hot sun in a country 8,000 miles away....

and then the part where you said

you'd be out of touch for a while and 'not to worry.'

But there was a tinge in your tone... Worry ~ and you never sounded worried.

The early morning call came

and it wasn't you on the other end of the line.

I chose stoic, while the world screamed.

Stayed quiet, while opinions rained down on your fall... as if they had any right to.

Navigated adulthood without the other half of me,

until I heard your voice again ~ calm in the tumultuous sea.

Peace, in the middle of the wars circling us.

I've cried oceans.

The tears still come more than I should say.

But here's what keeps me standing ~

you will never come home, yet I will see you again.

So I keep going.

Your voice in my ear, pushing me to be the best version of myself.

To change what I can. To help where I can.

To stand firm while the world breaks its back

trying to appease the noise.

I grow weary and then I remember what you taught me...

"Strength is found in quiet victories, where crowds never gather. The battles worth fighting, are the ones that will cost you deeply, but help others the most, that's why we do it. Not for ourselves. For the ones who can't."

You believed it. You lived it every day and you were the best part of us...

You never saw your service as political.

You saw it as protecting your family ~

your brothers and sisters in arms, us ~

and representing something worth standing for.

Many today, don't care and this weekend... many will forget.

But we won't...

Like every other day, we carry the loss of you

and hold tightly to the goodness of who you were and to the legacy you left behind.

This Memorial Day, I'll stand at the shoreline at sunset,

say a prayer for all those serving...

at home and down range ~

then place a bottle in the ocean

and let the current decide where your words land next.

I miss you. I love you.

The best of us never come home.

Happy Memorial Day... my hero, my family, my friend.

Before they could get out of the pool a giant black hole opened and a completely new alien specie came out and abducted them to a parallel universe and now they've been erased from everyone's memory and it's like they never existed even to the writers of the show and we're all the chosen ones here this is why WE remember they exist but nobody else does

Man of the People, showing the Way