My parents drove down and we all went to the Museum of the Regiments on Remembrance Day.  If you are in the Calgary area it is worth seeing anytime.

 

I am very grateful that I have not had to experience war first-hand (I'm excluding the war on terrorism, which we all certainly have experienced in small degrees).  But it also concerns me that worldwide the understanding of what it really to be at war is sometimes being relearned rather than remembered. 

 

Hollywood's war movies are realistic and sometimes even factual now.  They show us the tragedy of war.  They don't sugar-coat the death and destruction.  So we all know what happens in wars.  But is watching a stranger die horribly on  a TV screen a deterrant or entertainment?

 

Take my Great-Uncle Edwin.  He was killed by a mortar in Holland near the end of WW II.  To my grandmother, she lost her little brother, and she grieved him until the day she passed away.  My mother lost an uncle and remembers the impact his death has had on her family.  I lost a distant relative I never met. 

 

Take Lori's grandfather.  He was wounded by a bomb in Europe and spent weeks close to death.  He came back wounded and alcoholic.  He later went on to become President of the Chamber of Commerce, but the drinking caught up with him and he had a stroke.  He survived only to spend the next 20 years unable to care for himself.  Lori's grandmother lost her husband to war, but is was long and drawn out.  Her mother became the child of an alcoholic.  Lori grew up in an atmosphere that was overshadowed with ripple effects of her grandfather's illnesses.  The impact on our children is minute.