Vietnam Women’s Memorial, courtesy of Kay Schwebke

AJN wishes all of our U.S. readers (and everyone else too) a safe, restful Memorial Day weekend, whether you are driving to the shore or the hills, staying put and having a barbeque, finishing a dissertation, running a 10K, working all weekend in the emergency department, gardening, or binge-watching episodes of a TV show on Netflix (you know who you are).

But let’s not forget the meaning of this pause to express gratitude to all soldiers and nurses who lost their lives in service to this country, and to their families. I still remember the Memorial Day parade that started downtown in our small New England town and passed our house almost a mile later, the rolling sound of the drums getting nearer for a long time, the old guys in various uniforms passing by, a few nurses in uniform among them.

We’d join the kids circling behind on bicycles as the parade went along the final stretch to the cemetery across from my grandparents’ house, turned slowly in, and marched on until it came to a stop near the center. A hush would fall then in the cemetery with its tall trees. There were no cell phone cameras then. There was nothing to break the quiet. No one was sending or getting texts. No one had earbuds in.

Even as kids we knew it meant something, that silence, and we knew enough to respect it, no matter what we believed or where we came from or were headed.