Even as American soldiers risk and lose their lives on the battlefields and streets of Iraq, it seems much of the nation is yet again content to look past the sacrifices made in our history and instead focus on shopping or simply getting out of town on “another three-day weekend.”

More people celebrate the religious holidays of Easter and Christmas than take time to commemorate Memorial Day, even though they themselves are not very religious. Yet their freedom of religion as well as their freedoms in everyday life as Americans — all of which are there because of our fallen veterans — are typically lost in the wash of commercialism.

Why is the importance of this day so fleeting?

Why do so few take time to remember the many thousands who have died in an apparently vain attempt to protect freedoms that are so often taken for granted?

This Memorial Day we encourage all of our readers to pause, reflect and give thanks to our fallen veterans and remember that they died so others could live.

The debt of gratitude we owe them can never be repaid.

We cherish too, the Poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led,

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies.

Moina Michael