How do we not just observe but honor Memorial Day?
How do we wrestle with honoring American soldiers, our brothers, sisters, moms, fathers and sons and daughters who have died in service to our country on Memorial Day and the weight of watching wars being waged on Iran and Gaza before our eyes?
The War on Gaza being live streamed in front of us? Since October 7, 2023, over 21,200 Palestinian children have been reported killed in the Gaza Strip. 17,000 children are completely unaccompanied or separated from both parents, facing the crisis entirely on their own. 6,000 Palestinians have suffered amputations. one-quarter of these individuals are children, making Gaza home to the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. Of the 250 Israeli hostages taken, 85 died. In Iran Amnesty International: Stated that the US strike killed at least 156 people, including over 100 schoolchildren, and cited evidence suggesting the weapon used was a US-manufactured Tomahawk missile.
The cost of war isn’t historical statistics but names and faces rolling across our news feeds.
Honoring Memorial Day means we don’t shield ourselves from the injustice of war.
We choose to see the human beings who waging war has taken from us. Our relatives, neighbors and fellow Americans whose lives were cut short and spent too easily.
We honor their lives today by shining a light on our government’s failure. Our Country’s failure to honor their lives by working for peace like their lives depend on it.
In our country’s 250 years of existence, our Government has avoided being at war for only 17 years. That’s a failing grade in my book. And when the cost of failing is our most sacred responsibility and our most valuable resource…our own citizens. That cost is too high. The cost is too high when we supply the arms to a genocide that creates the most child amputees in history. The Cost is too high when our country bombs elementary schoolers while they are on the playground with their friends.
Growing up in a rural town, I didn’t understand Memorial Day until I came home from the Iraq war after serving as a Combat Medic. Bringing my two young sons to the sunrise Memorial Day service at my local cemetery was the first memorial service I ever attended in my life. Growing up my father served in the army, along with my mother, my uncles, my cousins and grandfather’s father. I grew up around veterans, and I’d never been shown how to honor Memorial Day beyond the Flags, bumper stickers, BBQ’s and patriotic beliefs.
Holding my toddler son’s hand, on the cold metal folding chair I noticed for the first time the slow quiet tears of the families around me. Tears rolling down, weathered crinkly cheeks under a crown of gray hair. The white crosses behind the speaker were personal for them. Punctuating their grief, the burnt smell of gunpowder hung in morning air after the 21-gun salute around us. It was the first time I noticed all the family members left behind.
Memorial Day taught me something else that day.
The way to honor those soldiers who have died is this: to care for those they leave behind and work for peace like our soldier’s lives are priceless instead of expendable.
We can do both.
To Honor the Fallen, Heal the Wounded, and Work for Peace.
We can honor the dead by caring for those that are wounded by the loss of a loved one.
We can work for their healing by waging peace as hard as our country wages war.
We can demand our government be a force for peace, instead of the largest arms dealer and war profiteer on the planet today. So there will be less grieving mothers and fathers and sons and daughters gathered around the cemetery next year in America and in Palestine, Isreal and Iran.
How do we grieve this Memorial Day for those who have died in service to our country
Because our country is supplying hellfire missiles and 2,000-pound bombs to our ally Israel to erase 15,000 children all made in the image of God? 17,000 children are currently all alone. The Red Cross has had to create a new label called “unaccompanied”. That is Children separated from any mother or father or any adult they know. All alone in the middle of a war zone. How can we look away when a ceasefire is cover for continued killing? 883 Palestinians were killed in Gaza following the October 2025 ceasefire. According to the UN Human Rights Office, the truce was repeatedly violated by Israeli forces through near-daily artillery strikes, drone attacks, and direct gunfire.
War is hell. We honor the hell that has robbed American soldiers of their lives. We acknowledge the hell that our government is raining down on innocent civilians in Gaza and schoolchildren in Iran.
So how do we not just observe but honor Memorial Day?
This Memorial Day we can honor the lives that war has taken by waging peace.
Editor’s Note: Previously shared on Diana K. Oestreich’s Substack on May 25, 2026.
