Every year, Americans gather for cookouts, ballgames, family reunions and the unofficial beginning of summer. Flags wave from porches. Cemeteries bloom with fresh flowers while veterans stand quietly beside memorials bearing names etched in stone.

But Memorial Day is not ultimately about a long weekend.

Rather, it is about absence, the empty chair at the table, the folded flag in a widow’s living room and the parents who watched their children leave for war but never saw them return home. It is about young men and women who surrendered futures they would never get to live so that future generations could live theirs in freedom.

Memorial Day asks something difficult of us. It asks us to remember people many of us never knew personally and to pause in a culture that rarely pauses for anything. Most importantly, it asks us to recognize that freedom is not automatic. It has always come at a cost paid by somebody else.

In communities across Eastern Kentucky, military service is deeply woven into family histories. Nearly every church, school and hollow has sent sons and daughters into uniform. Some came home carrying scars seen and unseen. Some did not come home at all.

Their sacrifice deserves citizens who understand the responsibilities of self-government and communities willing to care for veterans and military families. It deserves a nation mature enough to disagree without forgetting the shared liberties protected by those buried beneath white crosses and markers.

Perhaps the greatest danger facing Memorial Day is not disrespect but distraction. It is easy to let the meaning of the day become buried beneath sales advertisements and busy schedules. Yet somewhere this weekend, a Gold Star family will visit a grave and remember a voice they have not heard in years. Somewhere a veteran will stand silently during the national anthem thinking about a friend who never made it home.

Those Americans carry Memorial Day every day.

The rest of us carry it only if we choose to.

So before the hamburgers hit the grill and before the holiday passes into another busy summer, take a moment to remember why this day exists. Visit a cemetery. Read the names on a memorial. Teach a child what Memorial Day actually means.

And remember that the freedoms we enjoy today were purchased by Americans who never got the chance to enjoy tomorrow.