As I sit here and type, I am a blubbering fool. I just left our school’s Remembrance Day ceremony. When I was in High School, it was often a fairly cheesy assembly – someone recited “In Flander’s Fields”, the band played a few songs, and there was a skit or two depicting the horrors of war. In grade 11, we gained a new drama teacher – an actor who took his work very seriously, and our Remembrance Day ceremonies became more thoughtful, meaningful and effective. I remember thinking that it was really a time that we should pay attention to what they were trying to tell us, rather than passing notes back and forth down the aisles of the school theatre. The ceremony I just attended was touching, meaningful, and definitely drove the point home. Often children think of people who are affected by was as “old people”, grown-ups, adults, but not children. I have to admit, I hate to think of children affected by war and how traumatizing and terrible it must be, and would rather not think about it than talk about it. The drama students did a fantastic job of presenting some tableaus, very dark, very somber, very effective, and the one that got me started was about a little girl in Holland clutching her rag doll and her mother by the neck as the bombs go off around her house. All that is left at the end of the scene is the doll lying amidst the rubble. (Cue: Vanessa’s waterworks – scene 1). I’ve always had a soft spot for stuffed animals and this type of symbolism kills me. My Mom tells a story about some science-fiction movie I watched with my parents when I was little (maybe 4 or 5) about a little alien boy who comes to live on Earth. He is “adopted” unknowingly by human parents who raise him as a human. When he gets to a certain age, he has to return to his planet. He had a stuffed elephant that was his favourite toy, and when he got “beamed” back to his home planet, all of his earthly belongings, including the elephant were left behind. My Mom claims that it took me forever to recover. I cried, I sobbed, I just couldn’t understand why this little boy couldn’t have his elephant, especially since he wasn’t going to have his parents anymore. The Christmas story of the Littlest Angel gets me too. Particularly when the little angel’s box of goodies is described – the treasures of a 4-year old boy. During this ceremony today, they showed a clip from the movie “Sophie’s Choice”. If you’ve ever seen it, I’m sure you know which scene they showed. In the movie, Sophie has been arrested and is headed to Auschwitz with her two your children. Her little girl looks to be 2 or 3, and her little boy looks about 4 or 5. The soldiers are sorting the line up into two groups - people headed directly to the gas chambers and the other, people headed to the work camp. A soldier, who notices her little girl clinging to her, obviously terrified and upset, and the little boy burrowing into her hip, approaches the mother. He tells her that she can only take one child with her, she “gets” to choose which child she will take with her to the work camp, and which one will be sent to the gas chamber immediately. She keeps telling the soldier that she can’t choose, but when he threatens to take both children away, she tell him to take her daughter. Then ensues a horrifying screaming, clinging to Mom, awful scene. (Cue: Vanessa’s waterworks – scene 2). This movie affected me tremendously when I first saw it. When I saw this scene again, I was done. I’m still crying. Now, as a parent of two children, I can’t even imagine being in that situation, having to choose the life of one child over another. Just thinking about it, I start bawling again. I can’t imagine having to hand over one of my children, kicking and screaming, to never see them again. And to have them think that I chose the other one over them as their last memory of me. What could be worse? So, on this day of remembering those who have fallen for our freedom, and who are currently protecting our world as we know it, let’s take a moment of reflection, and hope to Hell that we’re never faced with making such a decision in our lives, and never have to watch our children suffer as so many did and still do.