There are those who say that there is nothing as painful as losing a child; in the ordinary scheme of things, parents do not mourn their children – it is usually the other way around. Evelyn Harris is one of those who had to mourn a child, having lost her son Joshua Harris in August, 2008, a Navy SEAL who served in the war in Afghanistan.

In a feature on DigTriad.com, Evelyn Harris shared: “Somebody said to me, ‘Memorial Day’s going to be hard for you, isn’t it?’ I’m like, ‘Everyday’s Memorial Day for me.’”

This is the second Memorial Day for Evelyn and her husband Sam. During the first, their first, she and her family were guests at the Memorial Day activities in Thomasville, North Carolina. This year, she served as an escort for a family who recently lost a loved one to the war; she shared that it was something that she was doing for the memory of her son.

She shares: “I had four women in there (vehicle in parade) with me and tears were just streaming at the little kids with their flags. Your heart would just, you know, you just didn’t know if you could take any more, but yet it’s a sort of healing too.”

She proudly shared stories of her son, who served more than a hundred missions. She fondly remembered how “all of the SEALs will say he was the one that would say, ‘I’m going first, I’m going first.’ We even had one of the SEALs say, ‘I always knew I was safe when I was around Josh.’”