Pat Dollard | Young Americans

She’s young enough to be one of my own beautiful daughters …

But has aged so much in her own wisdom in life experience in such a short time as to be more than capable to teach me, and all of us, a valuable life lesson.

Monday night we at Dollard Nation were gifted with the voice of Marine widow Nicole Conley on the Jihadi Killer Hour’s U.S.M.C. 233 Birthday Special. It has taken me this long to digest the emotions of those two hours. I sat transfixed with you all as Nicole, her tiny and gentle southern voice, recalled for us her life with her beloved husband Matt.

I could not help but put my own daughter(s) in Nicole’s place … I can only imagine the deep and helpless pain her parents felt for her as this loss to her heart and soul fell onto her very young shoulders … especially while she lovingly carried hers and Matt’s future safe and peacefully inside her own body. On so many levels the very Earth had been yanked from under her feet. No matter how prepared a person thinks they are for the “dreaded possibilities” of loved ones in the military during war, that moment of disbelief and horror still strangles the heart and soul and cripples the mind. God love them, I do not know how they stand up from their trembled knees and carry on.

We do not give this blood so easily. The blood shed that makes the red on our Flag all the more deeper. Or the cleansing tears that brighten the hope of the white on that Flag. Or the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of stars added to that dark blue background every time another soul rises to the endless sky above us.

I can only imagine that you want every moment back that you ever had with that loved one … just to live them all over again and savor them longer and more attentively, no matter how small and insignificant the moment might have been. And every grand moment is now all the more significant and outstanding. To smell the loved one’s scent on the clothing that was left behind … Grasping at the memory of how his voice sounded when he asked you to marry him … when he said, “I Do” … when he told you he really was alright, but he missed you, on the phone from so many miles away in a strange land.

It breaks your heart for people like Nicole. That irreplaceable loss … That unquenchable thirst for the sound of a voice coming into the now empty house. The starvation for the embrace and kiss that would wake you from this nightmare. And it has been repeated so many times these last few years with spouses, girlfriends, parents, siblings, and children.

We can never repay the sacrifice and service our military members have so bravely and willingly given for us and for our country … for the world. And neither can we repay the sacrifice their families have given.

Perhaps the most prolific and important declaration ever made by civilized man is one attributed to Edmund Burke:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing”.

These are not light or empty words. They carry with them the weight of many, many men (and women) over the ages of man that went into battle. With each loss we feel that weight upon our own souls. On Monday night I listened to Pat carefully and gently carry that weight as he asked Nicole the questions on his and our minds … and I thought that weight might crush me.

It was then that I felt the “Mom” in me kick in. What could I say to this young mother that might give her hope and vision for hers and her daughter’s future? What on God’s Earth could I tell my own daughter in this young woman’s place?

And then I recalled what Nicole had said about having known Matt since they were kids. Those memories of her life with Matt as a loving couple would always be there, but then there would be those moments as their daughter grew through life that Nicole would be able to see Matt in her face, in her voice, in her mannerisms … maybe even in her likes and dislikes in daily life. Nicole in the future will hear herself telling that little girl, “Oh, you’re just like your Daddy …” She’ll feel that yearning for Matt all over again in those moments, but also know that he is still always there with her and their beautiful daughter … this child that they created against the odds of Nicole even being able to have children. This divine gift of remembrance, longevity, love, and life. Of hope and faith.

And so in two weeks we will sit around our bountiful tables with family and friends and be reminded we should be thankful for all we are given in this life.

When we sit down this Thanksgiving I ask you all to join me in thanking God and Heaven above for men and women such as Matt Conley … and most especially for the families they left behind as a testament to their faith in something greater than themselves. Each one of them would have us all remember that their families sacrificed even more than they had … and would ask us to then thank God for them in their place. There is no metal more precious … No jewel more rare and priceless … No diamond as strong as the American military family. It is on their shoulders the weight of a free nation is carried into the next generation …

Thank you, God, for Nicole Conley and their beautiful little girl.

Thank you, God, for military families.