Skip to main content

Week 150: Remembering the Sons of Normandy

 

Introduction

This post is the first in a three-part series I’m sharing to coincide with the anniversary of my daughter Lily’s death. While traveling through Europe, I experienced many joyful moments — shopping in Paris, sipping coffee in a Parisian café, riding a canal boat in Amsterdam, and exploring charming cities like Bruges and Ghent. Yet, some places left a lasting weight on my heart. Normandy was one of them.

Remembering the Sons of Normandy

I arrived at Normandy beaches on a rainy day. Cold and wet, the gray sky pressed down as the rain pummelled the memorials. Water flooded the bunkers, and I imagined the boys who had been here — shivering, afraid, carrying guns they barely understood, unsure if they would survive.

Inside the museum, letters from parents to their sons captured ordinary life: a sister’s wedding, what they were having for dinner, small jokes, and snapshots of boys being boys — laughing, messy-haired, alive. These WWII letters from soldiers revealed the stark contrast between home and the horrors they faced.

Walking the Beaches

When I finally walked to the beach, now serene and peaceful, I could hardly reconcile the calm with what had happened here decades ago. I tried to imagine the young soldiers coming off the landing ships, hearts pounding, knowing many would not survive. The weight of their courage and stolen futures pressed down like the rain still dripping from my coat.

Each letter, photo, and footprint reminded me that these were not statistics. They were sons, brothers, friends — each one treasured, each one mourned. Remembering the young soldiers of Normandy is an act of love, and bearing witness connects personal grief to collective memory.

Grief Across Time

Even amidst the joy of my European travels — sipping coffee in Paris, riding a canal boat in Amsterdam, wandering charming streets — Normandy stayed with me. Grief, whether for sons lost in history or for my daughter Lily, calls us to remember. To remember is to honor life.

Reflection & Engagement

Have you ever visited a place that made history and loss feel real? How do you honor loved ones in your own life? Sharing reflections can be a quiet way to bear witness together — please leave a comment below.


 

Labels:

We’d Love to Hear From You

Share a reflection, a memory, or just say hello below.

Popular posts from this blog

The Version of Me I’m Leaving Behind

​ April found me still reminding myself to pause before I speak. My patience feels thinner these days. But something else has shifted too. My relationship with my mother is ongoing and complicated. Boundaries have helped. It’s getting easier to hold them—which, strangely, makes saying yes feel cleaner too. I even set up a friendship blind date for her and a client, meeting them there to help it along. They both said they were lonely. They both said they wanted connection. Neither followed up. Instead, my mom booked a bus trip with the neighbor she insists she can’t stand. I laughed when she told me—really laughed. Not because it was surprising, but because it wasn’t. She moves toward what’s familiar, even when it doesn’t suit her. I know that pattern. I’ve lived inside a version of it. She either copies my hairstyle and clothes or criticizes them. There’s rarely a middle ground. I’m less affected than I used to be—not because she’s changed, but because I’m starting to see her m...
Read more

Week 152: Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone

The third and final reflection on collective and personal grief and on the love that survives when everything else is lost. Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone When Otto Frank stepped off the train back into Amsterdam in June 1945, the city he returned to was both familiar and unrecognizable. The canals still shimmered in the summer light, the bells still rang from the Westerkerk, but the laughter of his wife and daughters was gone. The war had ended, but for Otto, the silence had only just begun. For weeks, he searched. He wrote letters, visited refugee centers, and followed every rumor that his daughters, Margot and Anne, might still be alive. In his pocket, he carried hope like a scrap of paper—folded, worn, almost transparent. But each inquiry ended the same way: a shake of the head, a name on a list, a quiet apology. Eventually, the truth reached him—Anne and Margot had not died in Auschwitz as first reported, but in Bergen-Belsen, of typhus, just wee...
Read more

Week 153: Closing the Series & Turning Toward November

As I close this three-part series on grief—its collective echoes, its private chambers, its impossible tenderness—I find myself turning, as I always do this time of year, toward November. It’s the month that holds everything. Lily’s angelversary sits at its center like an ache I can feel before the calendar even flips. First in my dreams, then in my bones. My body always seems to remember before my mind gets the memo. One moment I’m functioning—answering texts, folding laundry. The next I’m swirling: emotional to numb, numb to sobbing on the dining room floor while her favorite pop songs pulse through the speakers, as if she’s just in the next room asking me to turn it up. And then the next morning… nothing. A strange, hollow quiet. Not peace, not calm—just a blank space where last night’s tidal wave had been. It still startles me how grief moves like unpredictable weather, sweeping in and receding on its own terms. November has a way of unearthing the memories I’ve tucked c...
Read more