Today is Memorial Day, a day to honor the brave men and women who died while in military service.

It’s also my Mother’s birthday.

One of my earliest memories of Memorial Day was her stopping on a street corner and giving money to a man in uniform, and then putting an artificial red poppy with a wire attached to it through the buttonhole in my shirt. She said it was in honor of soldiers. I asked why we did that and she said, “It’s just something nice to do.”

I never went to the library to look up the reason why; I just took Mom’s word for it that it was something nice to do. As an adult, I became more curious about the red poppy and found a poem written by Moina Michael. It reads as follows:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

Today I’m remembering my Mom and our fallen heroes too
by wearing a poppy because “it’s something nice to do.”

Happy Memorial Day!

John