Integrity: The Living Memorial
Deborah Colleen Rose
7/13/20263 min read
I shall be posting this on several of my blogs. I have really fallen behind on my writing. It’s been a hard year.
My mother’s health began to decline very quickly, and then she passed away this year. Truth be told, last year wasn’t easy either as I watched her struggle with both her mental and physical health.
Then came the task of handling all of her personal affairs. Just as I thought I was beginning to see daylight and was making plans for summer trips with friends and my grandchildren, I fell and broke my femur.
Two months later, recovery is still going on. Slowly. Painfully. Some days it seems to drain every ounce of hope from my soul. But I carry on, one moment at a time.
I tell you all of this to explain how this article came to be.
To fill the long hours of recovery, I began binge-watching The West Wing. There is actually a story behind why I chose that series, but the truth is I probably never would have started watching it if I hadn’t needed the distraction and suddenly found myself with more time than I knew what to do with.
One episode, in particular, stirred something in me.
A prominent character, Leo McGarry, says:
“Men died for us. We had a responsibility to live our lives with integrity and honesty to honor their sacrifice.”
The line comes after he discovers that a military friend, a man who had once risked his own life to save Leo’s, had committed a crime involving a government contract. The quote reveals Leo’s profound grief and disappointment. It isn’t just that his friend broke the law. It is that someone who had once displayed extraordinary courage had failed to live in a way that honored the sacrifices they had both witnessed.
As the episode ended, I found myself sitting quietly, thinking about that one sentence.
How many men and women have died since the birth of our nation to protect this country, defend our freedoms, and preserve the rights we often take for granted?
The best estimates place that number at around 1.2 million Americans who have died while serving in the United States military.
One point two million.
They trained. They left behind families, sweethearts, children, and dreams. They endured fear, hardship, exhaustion, and separation. Some died on distant battlefields. Others died from wounds, disease, accidents, or the countless dangers that come with military service.
Most never had the opportunity to grow old.
Many never saw the futures they were fighting to protect.
Each one was a life with hopes, flaws, talents, laughter, and people who loved them.
We pause each year on Memorial Day to honor their sacrifice.
But is that enough?
I’m not criticizing the parades, the flags, the ceremonies, the family gatherings, or even the backyard cookouts. Those traditions have value. They remind us to remember.
But remembrance without reflection is incomplete.
If we truly appreciate the lives they lived and the price they paid, perhaps honoring them requires more than one day on the calendar.
Perhaps it requires something of us.
“Men died for us. We had a responsibility to live our lives with integrity and honesty to honor their sacrifice.”
That statement reaches far beyond military service. Integrity doesn’t belong to one political party, one religion, or one philosophy. It doesn't. Integrity belongs to each of us, and we either carry it into our daily choices or we don't.
It asks us how we conduct ourselves when no one is watching.
Do we tell the truth?
Do we keep our promises?
Do we treat people fairly, even when it costs us something?
Do we stand for what is right even when it is unpopular?
Do we allow our disagreements to strip away our character?
Integrity isn’t owned by one political party, one religion, or one ideology. It belongs to every one of us.
When we lie because it is convenient, excuse corruption because it benefits “our side,” or sacrifice our principles to win an argument, we spend something that was purchased by someone else’s sacrifice.
Freedom isn’t sustained only by soldiers.
It is sustained by citizens who are worthy of what those soldiers defended.
Perhaps the greatest way to honor those who died isn’t simply by placing flowers on a grave, lowering a flag to half-staff, or observing a moment of silence.
Perhaps it is by becoming the kind of people they hoped would inherit the nation they gave their lives to preserve.
The next time I am tempted to compromise my integrity, justify something I know is wrong, or remain silent when honesty is required, I hope I remember those 1.2 million lives.
And I hope I ask myself one simple question:
Does this choice honor the people who paid a price so I could make it?
If the answer is no, then perhaps I should choose differently.
That may be one of the truest ways we can thank them.
Not just with a holiday.
But with a life; a life full of integrity and honesty.