Letter to my sons on Remembrance Day

Hi Boys!

How are you doing these days? Are you keeping up with all your studies? Have you been eating well? How’s the cafeteria food? I hope you’re eating your fruits and veggies! Remember what I tell you about eating breakfast!

Are you getting enough sleep? Roommates not getting on your nerves? Hopefully, you’re not getting on theirs!

How’s the laundry situation? Doing it in a timely fashion and keeping your jeans separate from your whites? Make sure you wash your sheets, ok?? Don’t let them get gross!

Any cute girls? You’re not saying? Make sure you don’t let the stress of school get to you. I hear kids on university campuses have high anxiety! Make sure you get out and find time to relax and have fun!

I was thinking about you boys this morning as we paused for a moment of remembered silence. You know it’s been hard for me, as a mom, to let you guys head off to university and find your own way. It’s a mom-thing, and letting kids grow up and leave is hard. It’s a good and natural thing, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it’s still hard.

I was then trying to imagine what I would have felt had I not been sending you off to university but to war. They were your age. 18…20.. instead of carrying pencils and Mac Books, they carried guns. Real guns. That killed real people. They were not killers. They were just ordinary farm boys. A lot like you. And their moms weren’t superhuman moms. Just ordinary, anxious, wanna- keep- my-boys-safe kind of moms.

I shake my head… I can almost feel the panic… How did they bear it? There was no cell phone communication, no quick “I’m fine Mom, don’t worry” texts—no phone calls. Moms had to let their sons go, knowing full well the hell they were going to face.

And a lot of moms never received their sons home again. Ever. Not for Christmas break or reading break. Just never.

So I want to say thank you to those moms and honour them for their incredible sacrifice. Your boys fought in wars they didn’t create, so we could live in a country that is free. Those boys will forever be heroes, but so are you.

Thank you doesn’t seem like enough. We need to live our thank you. Every day that we live in a country where we can speak, work, play and worship freely, we need to live thankfully. Remember the huge sacrifice of every soldier and the family that the soldier represents. Remember history so that history does not repeat itself. Teach history and the stories to our children so that the horror of the sacrifice does not lose its impact.