Memorials don't just happen. Someone does the hard work of sacrificial living; someone else lives, doing the hard work of remembering the sacrifice. The rest, as they say, is history.
The women of the South who may have started Decoration Day, the predecessor to what we now call Memorial Day, decorated the graves of those who died during the Civil War. Notably, they decorated the graves of the soldiers from both the North and the South. What they were memorializing was not the battle but the sacrifice. Certainly, the soldiers did not set out to die. They set out to offer their lives as a sacrifice for the cause in which each "side" believed.
Memorials don't just happen. They require a sacrificial act and an act of remembering, a demonstration of gratitude.
The religious life is all about creating memorials. God sacrifices; people remember. People sacrifice for God and neighbor; God and people remember.
Think about how you want your life to be memorialized. It is not too late to start living your life in a way which will cause people to remember you as a person who sacrificed something for some cause, someone you love, some One you believe in. It may not require you to die, but it will require you to sacrifice.
Live your life in such a way that someone will want to do the hard work of remembering you for your sacrificial living; for a life that that is pleasing to God, to your family and friends, to your country, and to those who may never know your name but will remember your sacrifice.
Use this Memorial Day weekend to do the hard work of remembering those who sacrificed for you. But also use it as a time to ponder how you want to be remembered.
Memorials don't just happen. People, like you, need to build them.
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