When I started my career, I was a freelancer. My first regular gig was working on a crew that filmed the USMC boot camp graduations. Almost every Friday, we'd get up early, drive to Parris Island, and set up a multi-camera production to capture the event.
My favorite part of each graduation was the very end, when the newly-minted Marines would joyfully reunite with their families. Parents, siblings, sweethearts (and sometimes spouses), would run to find their new Marine. For an observer, the sense of joy and pride on that parade deck was almost overwhelming.
As contractors, we never knew exactly where the graduates were headed. After boot camp, they would be sent for advanced training, and then ... somewhere. It could be Hawaii. We hoped it was Hawaii.
On graduation day, the families were so happy. The future they saw for their Marines was a shining, glorious road of adventure and achievement, culminating in either a successful transition to the private sector or a well-earned retirement and pension.
But not all were so lucky.
We knew, because we got the calls. Drill Instructor so-and-so, after serving at Parris Island, was sent to Iraq. He never came back. Did we have any video of him? Lance Corporal so-and-so was deployed to Afghanistan. His family wanted another copy of the graduation DVD, because that was the best video they ever had of him.
After a few years, I moved on to other opportunities. But I've never forgotten the contrast between the happy families milling around the Parris Island parade deck, and the grieving families that called the office asking if they could still get that DVD they didn't order at the time, because it was the last time they saw their son or daughter outside of a flag-draped casket.
On Memorial Day, I remember the families I saw on graduation day.
The father, his face etched with hardship and shaded by a cap emblazoned with an eagle, globe and anchor - he sees his son standing tall in a uniform, and it is the proudest day of his life.
The girlfriend holding a baby, smiling as tears stream from her eyes - she had given her heart to a boy, and on this day he proves to her that he will be the man he promised to be.
The little boy, gazing up in awe at his big sister, seeing her for the first time as a strong and capable woman.
Thousands of families passed before the lens of my camera. For how many of them today is a day of heart-rending sorrow, I'll never know. But I do know that they - and all the families who have lost a loved one in the service of this nation - deserve to be remembered and supported.
For those of us on the outside, looking in, it is the least we can do. And, perhaps, it is all we can do.