Sacrifice

Sacrofice

By Nick Aitoro

I have written before about what gratitude truly is, that it is a practice, not merely reactive but chosen. It is a way of seeing the world, one that includes appreciation for the journey, for the people who shaped us, and even for the hardships that stretched us into who we are now.

Today I am feeling a different kind of gratitude. Not the kind we feel when someone does something thoughtful for us. Something deeper.

My heart is filled with both gratitude and grief. Seeing the photographs of the men and women who gave their lives for this country reminds me that the freedoms we take for granted were not free. They were purchased, and the price was paid in full by people who never got to collect on what they bought.

The sacrifice was never theirs alone. It was carried by the families, the friends, the fellow service members, and everyone whose life they would have touched in all the years they were denied.

We tend to think of loss as an event: a date on a memorial, a folded flag, a moment of silence. But loss does not end on that day. It continues through every birthday missed, every empty chair, every conversation that never took place, every future that turned out different because that person did not come home.

Today I am grateful for their courage. I grieve for the lives they could not finish, and for everyone still carrying the weight of their absence.

I am trying to hold that today, not as a thought that passes through, but as something that changes how I move. The lump in my throat. The welling of my eyes. The ache in my chest. I will sit with that.