Here we are, in the midst of a three-day weekend that serves for many as the end of the school year and the beginning of summer.

For some, it will be their first getaway of the season. For others, it will be the weekend on which they open their pool.

For some, it will be the day on which they remember and honor loved ones lost in service to their country.

That is, after all, the real reason for Monday’s observance of Memorial Day.

For 156 years our nation has paused for just this one day to honor and grieve the men and women who have died while serving in the armed forces.

Those who were brave and honorable — driven by duty and patriotism, they also were sons and daughters. Someone’s family, someone’s friend.

Some of them saved the world, while others struggled in conflicts that still boil.

But no matter where or when they served, the fact remains they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest of us.

We owe them at least a pause this Memorial Day 2024 to understand that when we splash in our pools and break out our grills this weekend, it was because they were willing to serve — and willing to give up their lives — to ensure we are safe and free to do so.

But, as President Franklin Roosevelt said, “Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.”

How fortunate we are to have the luxury of that forgetting. But not all of us.

On Memorial Day some will feel a fresh sting.

Here and there, worn tombstones remind us of those war dead.

We know only that they numbered in the thousands.

They are gone from us — but never, ever forgotten.

This Memorial Day, as we enjoy our time with family and friends, let us not forget that we owe our gratitude not only to those who fought generations ago, but to those men and women still today who are fighting and dying.

And they will not be the last.

Stop for just a moment before returning to your holiday festivities to remember them — so very many of them — and to whisper the least of what they deserve: “Thank you.”