Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

I always think of my dad when Remembrance Day comes around. I never met him because he is one of the many who never came home, but it always feels as though I knew him well. 

I wanted to say something today, but due to some disturbing news yesterday, I couldn’t think straight this morning.  So, this is a post from a while back, not just for my dad, but for all the other lost souls too…

There have been many gestures of remembrance, over the years, from brass bands to fly pasts all over the world, but the one that affected me most was watching the creation of hundreds of tiny ice figures, each one the artists representation of a fallen soldier. There was something very poignant, seeing so many tiny figures sitting in rows, knowing that one by one they would all gradually melt and be gone forever.

Then there was the display of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, such a lovely idea. There will be 888,246 of them in the end, each one representing a soldier who never came home. I loved the way the display was designed, a river of blood red poppies pouring out of a window into the moat below.

And then there was the candlelit service at Westminster Abbey. So many moving prayers and hymns as the lights were slowly turned off, leaving the cathedral in the gloom. When the last candle was extinguished, you could have heard a pin drop.
You could be forgiven for thinking that all this remembrance of war was not a good thing, even though we don’t want any more of them. Terrible things are usually best forgotten, aren’t they?

But it suddenly dawned on me in my emotional state, we are not honouring war, we are honouring and remembering all those who gave their lives so we could live in peace…