In remembrance

My great-grandfather registered for the World War I draft in 1918.  He was in his forties at the time and was not drafted.  His final child, my grandfather, would be conceived shortly after the war ended. 

I sometimes wonder what might have been had things gone a little differently.  If my great-grandfather had possessed a skill the military needed, then they might have taken him despite his age.  And he might have died in those horrible trenches.  And my grandfather and all his descendants never would have existed.  What if, what if...

All of our lives hang perilously from threads, barely avoiding being snipped away by the whims of chance long before we're scheduled to be born.  It's a sobering thought.

But today isn't for what-ifs.  It's not about us at all.

Today is for the honored dead.