Memorial Day

A few weeks ago my daughter and I visited Arlington National Cemetery while she was in town for an AAU tournament. I didn’t plan it as a lesson…we just went. And the moment you walk through those gates and see those rows of white headstones stretching further than your eyes can see, you don’t need to say anything. The space does the talking.

My daughter is a teenager. She’s got her whole life ahead of her and is unimpressed by most things. But she stood there quietly in a way I hadn’t seen before. That place has a weight to it that no classroom, no speech, no Instagram post prepares you for.

It got me thinking about something I’ve carried for a long time.

Memorial Day carries a different gravity when you’ve actually lived overseas. When you’ve sat across from a 22-year-old Army specialist at a bar in Ramstein or a naval base in Naples and realized pretty quickly that you both understood something most people back home never will, what it feels like to be an American far from home, navigating a world that wasn’t built for you.

I ran into American military personnel in almost every country I played in. And every single time, there was this unspoken recognition. We were both living out of bags, adapting to foreign cultures, eating food we couldn’t name, missing things we couldn’t explain to anyone who hadn’t done it. The fish-out-of-water experience has a way of connecting strangers fast.

The comparison ends there though, and I want to be honest about that. My overseas life had hard moments…but the stakes for me were a bad season. The stakes for them were everything. They were far from home and ready to die for the people they left behind.

That’s a completely different game.

Those rows at Arlington are full of people who understood that. Who packed their bags for a country and chose a version of sacrifice that makes my decade abroad look like an extended vacation with a basketball.

I’m glad my daughter saw it. I’m glad she stood there quietly and felt it. Some things you can’t teach, you just have to stand in front of them.

To every service member who ever shared a drink with a confused ballplayer trying to figure out where he was, thank you. And to those who never made it back home, we remember you today and every day.

With OverseasX, you’ll never have to walk this journey alone.