There are Memorial Days that pass quietly, and there are others that settle deeper in my thoughts. This year feels like the latter, a day when remembrance reaches a little farther into what I honor, what I most revere in this life.
I’ve been fortunate in my life. Those in my family who served came home. As a boy, I never knew enough to worry when my father was at sea. He was simply my hero, and I assumed he always would be. We honor those like him on Veterans Day, but on this day, Memorial Day, we think of them too, the living heroes who walk among us.
But today belongs to those who did not.
Memorial Day is for the ones who gave everything, who sacrificed their tomorrows so that we could have ours. It is a debt we can never repay, only honor. And in that moment of reflection, gratitude becomes something more than emotion. It becomes a responsibility, a solemn duty. It becomes motivation to live as the best versions of ourselves, worthy of the gift they left behind.
This year, as in recent years, reflection carries another level of gratitude for what I have in this life. Five years ago, a near‑fatal bout with Covid nearly ended my time among the living. A year later, a gangrenous gallbladder nearly finished me. By all rights, I could have been denied my tomorrows with so much to do, so much unfinished. Yet here I am, another spring, another season, another dawn breaking over the hardwoods. The gift of second and third chances is not wasted in my efforts to be my best version, nor do I suffer any illusion of invincibility.
The turkey woods are my sanctuary, my church. They are where I speak quietly with my Maker, the God I believe in, where I find my bearings, where the noise of the world falls away, and the truth of things rises and reveals. To walk those ridges again this spring, the life I’ve built together with my wife, my children, my family, and friends is a blessing I do not take lightly. It humbles me to know that the fallen never again felt a cool May morning, never again heard a gobble thunder through the timber, never again returned home to family with muddy boots and a full heart. Life is preciously short, painfully too short for those heroes we honor.
Their sacrifice is the reason I still can. That we still can.
So on this Memorial Day, it is fitting that this old turkey hunter reflects, honors, and remembers. Everything I love- the turkey woods, the seasons, the family I return to, the life I’ve been allowed by the grace of God to keep living- came at a price paid in full by heroes who will never grow old.
-MJ
© 2026 Mike Joyner- Joyner Outdoor Media
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