Memorial Day Never Ends for Me

By the time most people read this, Memorial Day weekend will already be underway.

There will be cookouts, mattress sales, lake trips, flags on social media profiles, and the familiar phrase: “Happy Memorial Day.”

I understand why people say it. Most mean well.

But Memorial Day has never really felt “happy” to me.

For me, it is personal.

Memorial Day is not only about my husband, Sgt. Jeremy “Jay” Seals. It is also about my father, Robert D. Wood.

Two different men.
Two different generations.
Both tied to service, sacrifice, and the lasting impact military life leaves on families.

My husband, Jay, served this country as an Army Signal Soldier, MOS 25B. He deployed to Afghanistan during Operation Dragon Strike with the 101st Airborne Division, 2/502 HHC, the Black Hearts.

Like many veterans of the Global War on Terror, Jay came home carrying things nobody could see yet.

He joined later than many do, at age 34. He served anyway. He believed in service.

Years later, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer connected to toxic exposure.

And then came the part most people never see.

Not the deployment photos.
Not the uniforms.
Not the patriotic speeches.

The hospital rooms.

The exhaustion.

The endless appointments.

The paperwork.

The fear.

The feeling of watching someone you love slowly disappear while still trying to hold a family together around them.

Jay died on October 31, 2018, at just 45 years old.

That alone would make Memorial Day deeply personal for me.

But loss and service did not begin or end there.

My father, Robert D. Wood, shaped much of who I became. His life, his sacrifices, and the values he passed down to me are part of this story too. Memorial Day reminds me that military service rarely affects only one person. It echoes through entire families, across generations, and through the lives left behind to carry the memories forward.

People often imagine sacrifice as something that only happens on a battlefield.

But sometimes sacrifice looks like years of carrying burdens quietly.
Sometimes it looks like military families learning how to adapt to uncertainty and loss.
Sometimes it looks like becoming a widow years after the war supposedly ended.
Sometimes it looks like children growing up understanding service and grief far earlier than they should.

There are thousands of military families carrying stories like ours.

Some lost loved ones overseas.
Some lost them to suicide.
Some lost them to cancers and illnesses connected to service.
Some lost them piece by piece over years.

The reality is uncomfortable, but true:

For many military families, the war never actually ended. It simply followed them home.

That is part of why Memorial Day matters.

Not because it is about politics.
Not because it is about performative patriotism.
Not because of slogans.

It matters because behind every folded flag is an unfinished story.

A spouse left behind.
Children growing up without a parent.
Parents burying sons and daughters.
Families carrying memories that never fully fade.

And yet, despite all of it, I am still proud.

Proud of Jay.
Proud of my father.
Proud of the people they were beyond the titles and uniforms.

I still hear Jay’s dark humor in my head sometimes. Soldiers have a way of making jokes in places civilians would never dare to laugh. Honestly, if Jay saw people crying too long over him, he would probably tell everyone to “quit being dramatic and go eat something.”

So I do my best to honor them honestly.

Not as perfect heroes carved from stone.
But as real men.
Human beings.
Family.
People who served, sacrificed, and left marks on the lives around them that time cannot erase.

This Memorial Day, I ask people to remember something important:

Freedom is not free.
And the cost did not stop when the uniform came off.

Some families are still paying it every single day.