I received an email Christmas greeting from one of my RWWC friends.  Her writing on the Wreaths Across America ceremony at the Middle TN Veterans Cemetary touched me to know that we did make a difference on that day.

The best Christmas blessing I will receive this year, has come from another member, Toni.  At her invitation, last week, I had the privilege of joining her at the Laying of the Wreaths ceremony at the Middle Tennessee Veterans’ Cemetary.  It is a frantically busy time of year, but I felt that God was drawing me to be still, to take the time to do this important thing. 

Toni and her organizers led the most beautiful ceremony, that I hope will become a tradition for our ladies to support.  Most of the ceremony was conducted high on a hill overlooking the cemetary, sheltered from the wind in a building surrounded by large glass windows.  As I listened to the moving words of  Kenny, I looked out the picture window just behind the podium and my eyes were drawn to a woman, about my age, visiting a grave a few hundred yards away.  I watched her wondering if it was her father’s grave she visited there.  I continued to watch as she sat on the ground, next to the grave.  My eyes strained to see in the distance, if it was a yellow blanket that she smoothed on the ground there.  

As  Kenny finished his inspirational words, he invited us to walk the cemetary.  “Write down the names of the veterans from the headstones.  Go home and look them up on the Internet and come to know of them as people, and of their sacrifice,” he suggested.  So I did.

I walked many rows that day, jotting down the names of patriots.  I saw the tiny Christmas trees that adorned the graves.  I saw the tin soldier on one.  I saw a beautiful Nativity set left on the grave of another.  I read the headstones, many WWII veterans and very many Vietnam War veterans, and one whose headstone said “The One and Only.”

Then I felt myself drawn to the place where I had seen the woman sitting earlier, now gone.  As I approached, immediately I knew what it was that she had been doing there.  It was a freshly dug grave, and bright yellow straw covered the grassless ground there.  My eyes welled up with tears as I read the headstone of a 20-year-old young man, buried there, distinguished service in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”  I looked to the ground, and I saw…..saw that the individual blades of straw had been straightened and arranged as if to make some order out of the straw.  I remembered the sight of her lovingly smoothing the “yellow blanket” from afar.  I thought of how this would be the first Christmas this young man would not be home in bed for his mother to tuck-in.  He was home to his final resting place.

Lord, how much I take for granted.  This Christmas Eve, as I tuck my daughters in bed, and smooth the soft blankets that cover them, I will think of that gentle woman and the care she took at that young hero’s grave.  I will thank God for the gift of having my children under my roof, for the privilege of being able to tuck them in, and knowing that they are safe.  I am so grateful for the sacrifice of so many,  whose grief at the holiday this year will be too much to bear.  For me, knowing of this sacrifice and being reminded of how lucky we all are, is the greatest Christmas blessing of all.