What Divorcees Can Learn From Memorial Day

As the country prepares to celebrate Memorial Day, most anticipate the opening of beaches and look forward to good cookouts and time with friends.  Very few give pause to consider the purpose of the day and how it came to be.  In a somewhat surprising sense, we need this day.  And the same balm that has helped to assuage our nation’s pain can also bring healing to divorcees.

            Simply stated, Memorial Day is a tribute to soldiers and the wars they fought.  It is a day to remember the fallen -- those who gave their all for our country.  We memorialize them by remembering their sacrifice.  Since the very founding of our country, parents have lost sons and daughters to the ugliness of war.  Their pain has been too deep for words and well beyond measure.

To know what Memorial Day is, is to know what it is not.  Memorial Day is not a day to revive grudges.  It is not a day to exercise hatred for the British for their actions prior to and during the American Revolution.  It is further not a day to exercise hatred for Germans for their role during World Wars I and II.  Still yet it is not a day to hate the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor.  History is there to document what happened so that we might never forget.  But to move forward with life, there must be an element of putting the past where it belongs and an attitude of forward thinking.

Had we as Americans held a forever grudge against Great Britain, they would not be today our greatest ally.  The bond we now share with Germany, Japan, Italy, Vietnam, and numerous other countries, is the result of a willingness to put the past behind us and let prior wrongs and differences be something that we remember, but something we refuse to let control us.  Interestingly enough, this attitude gained traction almost immediately after each war ended.  We even went so far as to aid our former enemies in helping them rebuild.  We actually helped them clean up the devastation that they brought upon themselves.

The reasoning behind our “forgiveness” and acts of benevolence is simple:  we wanted future generations to benefit from our selflessness.  The grudges we hold make life all about us.  Forgiveness makes way for future generations to live in peace and harmony, and to engage in relationships that make for happiness and successful living. 

Divorced parents must always remember that they chose their former spouse.  They also chose their children’s parent.  Let that concept soak in.  If you are a divorced parent, you alone chose your child’s father or mother.  Further, your divorce does not render your child an orphan.  Courts divorce spouses through judgments for dissolution of marriage.  They do not issue judgments for dissolution of a parent/child relationship.

The happiness and success of future generations, i.e. your children, your grandchildren, and so on, depend in large part on your ability to begin a healing process and move on with life.  You should want your child to have the best relationship possible with your ex spouse.  Why?  Because everybody benefits when that happens.  You will someday be a grandparent and a great grandparent.  Your willingness today to put the past behind you will have an everlasting impact on generations to come.

Let the healing process begin.  Happy Memorial Day.