We Remember

Every year, Memorial Day arrives on the calendar like any other Monday, with the small familiar rituals of a long weekend, the cookouts and the traffic and the first real warmth of early summer. And every year, underneath all of that, is something quieter and heavier that deserves more than a passing acknowledgment.

Today is not primarily a day off. It is a day of remembrance, set aside specifically to honor the men and women who gave their lives in military service to this country. That deserves its own quiet pause, even when the culture around us doesn't always reflect it.

The sacrifice we honor today was not abstract. It was made by real people, with families and futures and everything to lose, who gave those things permanently so that we could have the freedom to live the way we do. The sacrifice they made that allows us to carry forward because of it is not something that can be bridged with a social media post or a moment of silence between appetizers. But acknowledgment still matters. Remembrance still matters.

I think about what it means to sacrifice something permanently. In financial planning, we talk about sacrifice in terms of delayed gratification, of giving up something today for a better outcome tomorrow. That kind of sacrifice has a tomorrow attached to it. The people we honor today gave with no tomorrow in it for them at all. That is a different order of thing entirely.

To every family who has carried that loss, not just today but on every ordinary day when the rest of the world has moved on, thank you is not enough. It has never been enough. But it is what we have, and we offer it with full sincerity.

Take a quiet moment today, because it is genuinely deserved. The men and women memorialized in cemeteries across this country, under neat rows of white headstones and small American flags, gave everything. The least we can do is remember them by name if we know it, and by sacrifice if we don't.

We remember.

Jay Sexton is a finance instructor, doctoral candidate in Personal Financial Planning, and owner of Sexton Finance. He writes about the behavioral and emotional dimensions of financial decision-making at sextonfinance.com.