We will remember them

I watched Gareth Malone's latest choir tonight. I love choral music and I have loved his previous choirs but this one touched me, in a different and altogether appropriate way.

It's the season of remembrance, and in a way the All Souls remembrance is (for me personally) the easiest, or should that be the simplest of them all.
It's relatively straightforward to remember and pay tribute publicly to those whom one has known personally, one knows the backstory.

On Remembrance Day we give thanks for the lives and the sacrificial nature of the deaths of those I personally have had no human contact with .

Tonight, on Gareth Malone's programme I had that contact. I saw wives and partners who were left to wonder, left waiting for the knock at the door which would rip apart their very world. I shed many tears during the programme.

Afterwards, quietly I remembered those who were not there. I prayed fervently for those widowed and in particular remembered those who had been widowed during the World Wars, and conflicts since.

Tonight I realised that before Gareth Malone was a happy thought for his parents there had been military wives receiving news of the fallen.

We will remember them.