“I doubt we will ever see another generation like Dad’s,” wrote my stepson in response to my email telling him his dad’s name was included in a list of Clallam County veterans who had died since Memorial Day 2024. The list was in Memorial Day Tribute 2025, a special section published in the Sequim Gazette, Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum.

My husband Paul was part of the so-called “silent generation” that did not talk about their war experiences. His reticence was not related to seeing battle because he was never on the battle front.

Rather, I got the impression that for him, being in the service was part of what you did if you were a guy and, therefore, not too remarkable. He entered the Navy as soon as he turned 18, which was about the time World War II was winding down.

In the fifties, Paul joined the Air Force and was stationed in Alaska during the Korean War.

“Not much to see here” — or at least one would not think so when he spoke so little about his experience. I have since learned that not talking about the war was common for men who returned from service in an active war; not necessarily healthy, but common.

I do not know how many on the PDN list of over two-hundred names were in WWII. My guess would be that most were from the Korean and Vietnam Wars. A few may be from the Gulf Wars.

My current state of being — that is, as a grief container since the death of Paul — invites me to take in the grief inherent in just about every news headline or the grief of every ending day.

We are reminded of our grief by the dusty hat that we leave hanging on the doorknob or the feeling we have when we pass by the aisle we would have shopped in for his favorite salami.

Individually, we have our unique reminders.

Collectively, some reminders are the same for many. None is as poignant as seeing the fields of white headstones shown on Memorial Day tributes of those that died protecting their country and its ideals. Paul and I saw such fields when we visited France.

Paul looked up the name of a high school friend whom he knew died at Normandy.

I wonder about the grief containers at home who may never have fallen in love again or sons and daughters who never knew their father.

I wondered how many parents, spouses, children and grandchildren of those buried under bare stones walk through military cemeteries just to sense the presence of their loved ones as part of them even though they may not have met them.

How could we not feel remorseful pride for those who died to save their country yet wonder how necessary it really was.

How could we not feel unbearable sadness for those who were left to imagine what could have been but would never be.

How could we not salute and cheer those willing to give their life in their youth to gain and save freedom in our daily lives.

I did not know Paul as a military person, but I still feel pride in his willingness to give to his country. I feel pride writing about his military life.

Even as the Paul generation is ending, another arrives on the heels of it with a clear vision of its own waning daylight for men as veterans, as martyrs, as expendable.

Do we, will we still raise boys to embrace their death as a price they and we pay for peace? We say we do at their funerals.

Given technological advances that provide long range effectiveness like drones that do not require humans nearby to point, aim, and shoot, we can be hopeful wars will be less about their deaths than in the past.

Surrenders and victories will be declared sooner with less bodies left on the battlefield if cyberspace can be called a battlefield.

We can hope. We can imagine that we will have more combat veterans living to the age of 100 being honored for their service on Memorial Day.

The grief will be the same then as it is now and as it was during all wars.

The honor of the brave who fall during or carry with them the horrors of war into their no longer ordinary lives is and will always remain the same.

Latent realizations of the miscalculations of leaders cannot tarnish the heroism and self-sacrifice

We can hope that future conflicts between nations are constructed and resolved using methods resulting in minimal deaths. So far this century, little progress and dare I say effort has been made toward that end.

We can do more than hope; we can expect.

We can demand based on our value for the lives and futures of the men and women (still mostly men) sent into battles spawned by powerful old men.

Meanwhile, grief containers like me are mourning aged partners who gratefully lived long enough to have full lives and natural deaths.

If we fulfill our best intentions, 50 years from now today’s new generations of couples will be many old generations celebrating living without war and honoring deaths without sacrifice.

Then and only then will our great-great grandchildren not be part of another generation sacrificed like my stepson’s dad’s generation of WWII.