It was a quiet summer Saturday morning; the heat was still just a promise unfulfilled. A small crowd was gathering at the Greenbush commuter rail station, waiting for a train to arrive. Right on schedule, it glided in:

The last car was the one we were waiting to see. Most of the people there that morning were not riding in to Boston. They’d come simply to see the Gold Star Memorial Train as it made its stop in Scituate.

There were people in uniforms and in tie-dye shirts, little children in strollers and older men with canes, all there for the same reason. Some of the names on those gold stars were all too familiar to the people on the platform. Hands reached out to touch them. It means so much that they are remembered.

As we walked back to the car, my husband spotted a bumper sticker:

The war doesn’t end as soon as you step off of the battlefield.