Unforgotten

Today is an important day. A day when we take a minute -- literally ONE MINUTE--and stop to reflect on the sacrifice that soldiers have made for us through history. In a world that seems upside down and backwards, this sacrifice remains as noteworthy and important today as it was in the 1910s and 1940s, the 1960s and 1970s, the 1990s and into the 2000s.

We can't forget the destruction and devastation of war. We can't forget the men and women who never came home. But we also can't forget those who did.

My grandfather Ted was a motorcycle scout. It was his job to ride ahead and ensure safe passage for his regiment. He ran over a mine and was blown up, faced a long recuperation, and then returned to battle. He met my grandmother Jean -- a British woman who worked in a munitions factory to support the war effort -- and they fell in love. They married and she agreed to leave all she knew to return to Canada with her husband.

The glitch in the fairytale romance was that the man who went to Europe, who met that beautiful young woman, who fought for his country, was not the man who returned home with her. The war had changed him. The things he saw and experienced followed him across the world and settled firmly between the couple, a barrier to a normal, happy life. They had children, struggled to make ends meet, but the war never ended for Ted.

After years of his trying to drink away the memories, of violent outbursts, my grandma took her girls and left. He lived the rest of his life from the bottom of a bottle. I never knew him and only met him a few times before he died. He didn't have contact with his children. Didn't enjoy loving relationships. Instead he lived with the ghosts of the past.

On Remembrance Day we celebrate the brave men and women who fought for their countries. Died for their countries. But we must also celebrate those who fought and lived. Those who returned home to a world they could no longer relate to after the fighting was over. Those who struggled to connect with others who no longer understood them or what they had been through. Celebrate soldiers like my grandfather Ted. He sacrificed his life in World War II--his body just took decades to catch up.

So today, I honour the soldiers of the past, who died or were forever changed by their experience. And I honour those brave men and women who continue to fight, to die, to come home broken and try to rebuild their lives.

I won't forget.