Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer, which this year is a little stranger than normal considering the recent weather.

We have gone from unusually cool days that felt like early fall to days that are better suited to midsummer. The result is you have shorts and sweatshirts trying to occupy the same space.

This means at some point this summer you will pull a sweatshirt out of a drawer and, having forgotten the early cool days, wonder: what it that doing there? The rule here is that it's OK to stuff it back in the drawer so when the first cool day in fall comes, you have easy access to a snuggly sweatshirt without having to seek out the entire winter wardrobe.

This gives the illusion of organization and being prepared.

Memorial Day also marks the end of what we traditionally call spring cleaning. The idea is that you should have finished all of that before this weekend so you can enjoy the start of summer.

This sounds good, but it seldom works as planned. I started spring cleaning the garage in 2007 and I'm still on the right side.

I will say the right side is looking pretty good, but in the spirit of full disclosure I must confess the left side has issues. It is amazing what you can find in your garage you forgot was there amongst the clutter: tools you thought were lost, a wheelbarrow, a car.

But this is not the weekend to worry about cleaning or doing yard work or completing any of those things on your to-do list you fully expected to have completed three weeks ago.

This is the weekend you tell everyone you will finish that list starting next week, which is what I said about the garage in 2007, and spend the time enjoying the first holiday of the summer season.

Memorial Day weekend is for family and friends, ballgames and car races, back yard play and cookouts.

But it is also a time to remember. In recent years Memorial Day has had a resurgence of significance. This seems to happen when we are in a shooting war, and make no mistake, we are in a shooting war.

Even in hard times this is the weekend to remember all those who gave their lives in the service of our country.
For those who may not know, Memorial Day started during the Civil War when a group of Southern woman decided to decorate the graves of soldiers from both sides. Sadly there has always been another war for which we must honor those who gave, as Abraham Lincoln noted, "the last full measure of devotion."

We should remember all those who accepted the call to serve our country, from a long forgotten list of rag-tag men who fought with George Washington before there was a county to have a Memorial Day to men and woman dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, places until a few years ago were just names in a geography book.

This is the time to honor the Greatest Generation and the Lost Generation - those who lie under marble monuments and those buried under small markers in faraway lands; those who died in places with names like Inchon and Da Nang; and those who will never be found and lie quietly in unknown places.

So on this Memorial Day weekend take a moment to remember all those who paid the ultimate price so we may enjoy our ballgame, car race and backyard cookout.

And it might be worth a moment to throw in a quiet prayer for all those who are serving in harm's way to come home safe. We have enough markers to honor.

Ric Latarski is a freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics and can be reached at Rlatarski@aol.com.