Rows - Carmi's theme

Carmi's theme this week is "rows." My mind immediately went back to Washington DC and the trip that my son and daughter-in-law gave to me for a birthday present this year. We spent most of our time on the mall visiting the monuments and memorials. The newest, the World War II memorial, has a wall of stars, 4,000 of them, which represent the more than 400,000 lives lost during those years. If you scroll down, you will see another photo of this wall. Below the marble band at the bottom, you see the stars reflected in the pool beneath it.

When I visited Washington a few years ago, it was in June, and I literally became ill from the heat. The ladies I was with and I rode the trolley to see the sights, a great way to go, by the way. You can hop on and off all day. When we got to the Jefferson Memorial, I looked for the gift shop because it was cool there. We rode on to the Lincoln Memorial, and I was so hot and almost overcome by the heat that I told my friends I had to go back to the hotel. They went on to see the Vietnam Wall.

I missed seeing it that day, but I didn't miss it this time. My husband served in the Air Force in Vietnam and came home. Many did not. This wall has row after row of names of those people who lost their lives there. Some were there rubbing names onto paper. This gentleman was down on his knee with his phone out, taking the photo of the name of his loved one.

I just read that it was on this day in 1982 that the Vietnam Memorial was dedicated.

Rows...reminders.