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Today is Memorial Day, our national day of remembrance to honor all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedom. As of 14 May 2013 there had been 3,221 coalition deaths in Afghanistan. On May 15 a suicide car bomb hit a US convoy in Kabul, killing another 6 Americans.
The Taliban traditionally begin their summer fighting season in April or May as the snow recedes. This year they have vowed a nationwide series of suicide and insider attacks on foreign troops, military airbases, and embassies. This year's fighting season will be crucial to Afghanistan's future as NATO combat operations end in 2014. My son Rudd's training team, and the many others like his are redoubling their efforts to to prepare the Afghan Army to assume security responsibility for their country before the coalition drawdown.
In 1985, Memorial Day took on special significance for me. In February we had buried my first husband, Capt Steven Olmstead, USMC, at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. Only 36 years old, Steve died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). On Memorial Day, we went to a celebration at Fort Rosecrans to honor him.  Rudd and his brother Woody were a little restless, so their grandfather took them walking around the cemetery. The next day, May 27, was my birthday. I was about to embark on a pity party over being widowed at 35 when I got a phone call telling me that this picture was on the front page of the San Diego Union newspaper. The photojournalist did not know that the boy's father had recently been buried near where the picture was taken. I, however, viewed his photo as a reminder from my Father in Heaven that He had not forgotten my boys, or me, and that He never would.
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