05/25/2026
🇺🇸Somewhere today or yesterday or a hundred years ago, a spouse or parent or child opened a dreaded telegram or saw the shiny black car stop in their driveway or heard the too loud knock on their door, and the words they read or heard sounded like ‘the person I love is gone’ but felt more like ‘I cannot breathe. I cannot go on alone.’
Yet, there were children to tell, dress blues to press, bodies to be returned home, memorials to plan, empty caskets to bury, and flags to be unfolded and draped. Taps to be played. Seven gun salutes. Fly overs.
I cannot breathe, and I cannot go on.
And then a day and night went by and there were still diapers to change and trash to take out and children who awoke from dreams in tears. There were closets full of clothes to be emptied, quiet bedrooms and silent dinner tables, paperwork to muddle through, dirtied casserole dishes, and wilted flowers that needed to be thrown out. Empty beds, empty chairs, empty pews, empty bleachers, empty arms. An absence of a certain laughter, a smile, a touch, a smell. A knowledge that life could never be the same.
I cannot breathe, and I cannot go on.
And then more days and more nights and more weeks and more months. Then a holiday and a birthday and an anniversary and then ‘the’ anniversary.
A spouse or parent or child feels a year pass and then two more and another five. They manage to breathe and go on - not because they are uniquely brave or strong but because someone they loved WAS and gave everything for a cause - a country.
They loved someone who served and protected the United States.
They loved someone who paid the ultimate price whilst fighting on land, flying high in the endless sky, deep in the ocean’s chasms, or training for the next mission.
Memorial Day is to REMEMBER them and to try, for just a single day, to consider what so many men and women sacrificed — their future for OUR future - so we may go on. So we may celebrate birthdays, attend church, get married, go to baseball games - achieve the dreams - so we may stand on this United States of America soil as free men and free women.
We can breathe, and we go on.
A great price HAS and CONTINUES to be paid for this opportunity. May God Bless our fallen and their families. 🇺🇸
Amber Beckham Lewis 2026
