Veterans Day After Loss: Honoring Service While Navigating Grief
Veterans Day while grieving a veteran brings unique pain. Learn how to honor military service authentically while navigating loss on your own terms.
The parade rolls down Main Street. Flags wave. A marching band plays patriotic anthems. Around you, people applaud and cheer, celebrating the men and women who served. And there, in the middle of this public display of gratitude and pride, you stand holding grief that feels impossibly heavy. Your veteran isn't here to be thanked. They won't be coming home from this parade. As the ceremony concludes and a bugler plays taps, you realize that everyone else will return to their Monday while you carry this loss forward into Tuesday, Wednesday, and every day after.
Veterans Day when you're grieving a veteran isn't just another Monday off work. It's a day when your private pain intersects with public celebration, when "thank you for your service" feels hollow because the person you needed to say it to is gone, when parades and ceremonies might honor the abstract concept of service while you're mourning the specific, irreplaceable person who wore the uniform.
Key Takeaways
- Veterans Day brings a unique blend of public celebration and private mourning for those who have lost someone who served
- Military grief carries distinct challenges, including sudden loss, traumatic circumstances, and the weight of honor and tradition surrounding military service
- You can create personal observances that honor both military service and your own grief journey without forcing yourself into public celebrations
- Solidified remains offer military families a portable, meaningful way to keep their loved one's service close while honoring their memory
- There is no timeline for grief, and Veterans Day may feel different each year as you navigate your loss
Reflections on love, loss, and the ways we carry them
The death of someone who served carries a unique and heavy weight. It isn’t just the loss of a loved one, it’s also the loss of a person whose very identity was shaped by duty, service, and sacrifice. The rituals that accompany military deaths — the folded flag, the three volleys, the sound of Taps, are deeply moving, yet they can also amplify the ache for the person behind the uniform.
I once worked with Grace, a young widow whose husband died during active service. “Everyone kept calling him a hero,” she said softly, “but I just wanted someone to remember how he always burned the pancakes on Sunday mornings.” That’s the paradox of military grief. The world honors the soldier, while you ache for the husband, wife, parent, or child who lived inside that uniform.
On days like Veterans Day, it’s okay to step away from the public rituals and create your own quiet acts of remembrance. As one client shared, “I keep his memorial stone in my travel bag, it’s how I bring him everywhere with me.”
Grief doesn’t have to be performed in formation. Honor your loved one in the way that feels most true to your heart.
Cathy Sanchez Babao
Parting Stone Grief Coach
The Unique Weight of Military Loss
When you lose someone who served, you're not just grieving a person. You're grieving someone whose identity was deeply intertwined with duty, honor, and sacrifice. (Cozza et al., 2010) Military service shapes a person's character in fundamental ways, and that makes the loss feel different from other types of bereavement.
Dr. Stephen Cozza, a retired Army colonel and professor of psychiatry at Uniformed Services University, explains that military deaths are often "sudden, unexpected and very often can also involve some kind of violence." (Cozza, quoted in American Heart Association, 2025) This includes deaths from combat, accidents, or suicide. Even when a veteran dies years after their service ended, their military experience remains central to who they were.
Military families face distinct grief challenges. Many are geographically separated from extended family support systems, having lived on bases far from home. Young widows and children may find themselves suddenly needing to vacate base housing to make room for the next commanding officer's family. (American Heart Association, 2025) The very structure that once provided community can become a painful reminder of what's been lost.
Research shows that the relationship between bereaved families and the military institution itself significantly impacts the grief experience. (Breen & O'Connor, 2011) Some families find comfort in military traditions and honors. Others struggle with the disconnect between official ceremonies and their personal pain.
Linda from Flagstaff, Arizona 🖤, whose husband served, describes how solidified remains help her continue honoring his service: "My husband and I loved to travel together. Now I leave a stone with his initials on it in every new country that I visit without him. I find a beautiful location to leave the stone and have a quiet moment of remembrance. It is a way of keeping him with me always."
Parting Stone Editors
When Public Celebration Meets Private Mourning
Veterans Day presents a particular emotional complexity. Unlike Memorial Day, which specifically honors those who died in service, Veterans Day was designed to thank living veterans. (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2023) This creates an awkward tension for those grieving. Do you attend the parade? Skip it entirely? Try to separate honoring your loved one's service from the weight of their absence?
Many people struggle with well-meaning phrases like "they gave their life for our country" or "they made the ultimate sacrifice." While these expressions come from genuine respect, they can feel reductive when you're missing someone's laugh, their advice, the way they took their coffee. Your veteran was a whole, complicated person who happened to serve, not just a symbol of sacrifice.
The military culture around death adds another layer. There are specific traditions: the folded flag presentation, the three-volley salute, taps played at graveside. These rituals carry tremendous meaning, but they also create expectations about how grief "should" look. (Carroll, quoted in American Heart Association, 2025) Some families find deep comfort in these ceremonies. Others feel pressure to perform a certain kind of dignified, stoic grief that doesn't match their actual emotional experience.
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♬ original sound - Jenny
Navigating Veterans Day on Your Terms
You don't owe anyone a particular way of observing Veterans Day. Some years, you might find meaning in attending a ceremony. Other years, being surrounded by celebration while carrying grief might feel unbearable. Both responses are valid.
Many bereaved military families create their own private observances that honor both service and loss. This might mean visiting a cemetery early in the morning before public ceremonies begin, creating space for quiet reflection. It might mean staying home entirely and looking through photographs, telling stories your loved one shared about their time in service.
Research on bereavement consistently shows that meaningful rituals help process grief, but those rituals don't have to be public. (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996) What matters is that they feel authentic to your relationship and your loss.
Consider what actually serves you on Veterans Day. If attending a parade helps you feel connected to your loved one's identity as a service member, attend. If you'd rather spend the day hiking a trail they loved, do that. If you need to simply get through the day by treating it like any other Monday, that's okay too.
Karen from Wisconsin 🖤 found her own way to honor her husband's memory: "I keep a stone in the car; I love this when I travel to a beloved location and I talk to Jack." This personal, portable memorial allows her to maintain connection on her own terms, separate from public observances.
Cremated remains can feel messy and meaningless. Instead of receiving a box of ashes following cremation, you can now receive a collection of stones. Solidified remains let you feel connection with the remains of your departed. Turn your ashes into stones at https://partingstone.com
The Particular Challenge of First Holidays
The first Veterans Day after loss often feels impossible. You haven't yet developed coping strategies. Everything feels raw. The date itself becomes a marker of "before" and "after."
That first year, survival is enough. You don't need to make meaningful tributes or attend ceremonies or explain yourself to anyone. If getting through November 11th means avoiding the news, staying off social media, and ordering takeout for dinner, that's what you do.
Subsequent Veterans Days often bring different challenges. The acute shock has faded, but the loss remains. Some people find that as time passes, they're better able to engage with public observances. Others find that Veterans Day continues to feel difficult year after year, and that's equally normal.
Grief doesn't follow a predictable timeline, particularly with losses tied to specific dates. (Worden, 2018) Veterans Day will likely always carry emotional weight, but how you navigate that weight will evolve.
Parting Stone Editors
Creating Meaningful Memorial Practices
For military families, one meaningful way to honor service is through memorial practices that reflect the portable, mission-focused nature of military life. Many find that solidified remains align naturally with military values.
The transformation process takes cremated remains and solidifies them into smooth, stone-like forms. This creates approximately 40-80+ stones from an average person's remains, providing families with tangible ways to honor their veteran's memory. The process takes 8-10 weeks to complete.
Robin from Brooklyn, New York 🖤, whose friend was a world traveler with multiple passports, explains how this approach honored her friend's adventurous spirit: "The stones provided a way to continue my friend's global travels. Her family and friends around the world were able to have their own resting place and memorial of their choosing. She is now on 5 continents, we lost count of how many countries."
For military families specifically, this approach offers several benefits that align with service values:
- Portability: Military families move frequently, often living far from hometown connections. Solidified remains can travel with you, maintaining that connection across deployments, relocations, and life changes.
- Sharing Among Family: Military service affects entire families. Solidified remains allow multiple family members, each impacted by that service, to have their own memorial. Children stationed overseas, siblings scattered across the country, parents in different states, all can hold something tangible.
- Honoring Sacred Places: Veterans often have strong connections to specific locations: where they served, where they trained, places that shaped their experience. Families can leave stones at these meaningful sites, creating lasting tributes in multiple locations.
- Tangible Connection: Many military families describe comfort in being able to hold something physical. Unlike traditional ashes, solidified remains feel natural to touch, carry, and display openly.
The service costs $2,495 for human remains and maintains the complete integrity of your loved one's cremated remains through the transformation process. Parting Stone works with funeral homes and families nationwide, providing collection kits and handling the entire process with the dignity military families expect.
Michele from Cottonwood, Arizona 🖤 describes the comfort this provided her military family: "It gave the opportunity to share stones with family members across the US and the ability for my son to pack his stone in his pocket to have his dad with him where ever he goes. And I have the opportunity to have John's stones right next to me in the living room open to the air."
@chloebluffcakes Thank you @partingstone 🤍 youve given me an unimaginable gift. One day I will share these with my little sister and carry her wherever we go in life together. #grief #partingstone #loss
♬ Repeat Until Death - Novo Amor
Supporting Others While Managing Your Own Grief
If you're grieving a veteran, you might also be supporting other family members through their grief. This adds complexity to Veterans Day, as everyone in your family may have different needs and different relationships with public observances.
Children grieving a military parent may struggle with the disconnect between how their classmates celebrate veterans and their own experience of loss. Elderly parents grieving an adult child who served may carry particular pain around patriotic holidays. Siblings may have complicated feelings about a brother or sister who chose military service.
There's no way to make Veterans Day comfortable for everyone. The best you can do is create space for different grief expressions within your family. Maybe one person attends the local ceremony while another stays home. Maybe you gather for a private meal but skip the parade. Maybe you acknowledge that this day is hard and that's all the observation you need.
Research shows that families who allow space for different grief expressions, rather than prescribing how everyone "should" feel, navigate loss more effectively over time. (Stroebe & Schut, 1999)
Parting Stone Editors
When Grief Becomes Overwhelming
Most bereaved military families experience intense grief that gradually becomes more manageable, even if it never fully resolves. However, some people develop what's called complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder, characterized by grief symptoms that remain intensely painful and interfere with daily functioning for an extended period. (Shear, 2015)
Signs that you might benefit from professional support include:
- Intense yearning or preoccupation with the deceased that doesn't diminish over time
- Difficulty accepting the death, even months or years later
- Numbness or detachment from others
- Feeling that life has no meaning
- Bitterness or anger that interferes with relationships
- Difficulty engaging in activities or planning for the future
The Department of Veterans Affairs offers free bereavement counseling to families of service members who died while on active duty, National Guard, or reserve status. This support is available through Vet Centers nationwide, with no cost to families. (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2025)
The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) provides comprehensive support specifically for military families, including peer support networks, grief counseling referrals, and crisis intervention available 24/7 at 1-800-959-TAPS (8277). (Mental Health America, 2025)
These resources exist because military grief is recognized as carrying unique challenges. Seeking support isn't a sign of weakness. It's a recognition that some losses require help to process.
Finding Your Way Forward
Veterans Day after loss doesn't have a right or wrong way to observe. Some years, you might find that participating in public ceremonies helps you feel connected to your veteran's service. Other years, you might need to protect yourself from the weight of public celebration while you're still drowning in private grief.
What matters most is that you give yourself permission to honor both the person and the loss. Your veteran's service was important. Their sacrifice mattered. And your grief for losing them is equally valid, equally real, equally deserving of acknowledgment.
Karen from Roanoke, Virginia 🖤 found her own way to maintain connection: "Whenever I travel I take a stone with me and leave one in each destination. That way I feel like my husband (who enjoyed traveling) can be a part of that experience."
You might discover that your way of honoring their memory evolves over time. What felt impossible the first year might become meaningful the third year. What brought comfort early in grief might feel less necessary as you integrate this loss into your life. Grief is not linear, and neither is your relationship with days like Veterans Day.
The goal isn't to reach a point where Veterans Day no longer hurts. The goal is to find ways to carry both the pride in their service and the pain of their absence, allowing both to exist simultaneously without one diminishing the other.
Practical Ways to Navigate Veterans Day
If you're looking for specific strategies to navigate Veterans Day while grieving, consider these approaches that other bereaved military families have found helpful:
Create a Personal Ritual: Develop your own way of marking the day that feels authentic. This might mean lighting a candle, visiting a favorite spot, or performing an act of service that would have mattered to your veteran.
Set Boundaries: You don't have to attend every event, respond to every "thinking of you" message, or explain your choices to anyone. It's okay to say no to invitations that don't serve you.
Prepare for Triggers: If you know certain things will be difficult (news coverage, social media posts, public ceremonies), plan ahead for how you'll handle them. This might mean taking a social media break, having a trusted friend on standby, or scheduling something comforting for after a difficult event.
Connect with Understanding People: Seek out others who understand military loss, whether through TAPS, local grief support groups, or trusted friends and family. Sometimes just knowing you're not alone in finding this day difficult makes it more bearable.
Honor in Your Own Way: If traditional observances don't fit your grief, create alternatives. Maybe you spend the day doing something your veteran loved, or you gather with others who knew them to share stories, or you simply acknowledge that this day is hard and that's enough.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you honor a deceased veteran on Veterans Day?
There is no single "right" way to honor a deceased veteran on Veterans Day. Some families attend public ceremonies and parades, finding comfort in collective remembrance. Others create private observances that feel more personal: visiting a gravesite, looking through photographs, or spending time in places that held meaning. Many bereaved military families find that honoring their veteran authentically means respecting both their service and your current emotional capacity. What matters is that your observance feels genuine to your relationship and your grief, not that it meets external expectations about how you "should" commemorate the day.
Is it normal to struggle with holidays after losing a veteran?
Yes, struggling with holidays after military loss is completely normal. Veterans Day and Memorial Day in particular can feel emotionally complex because they bring your private grief into public spaces where others are celebrating. Research shows that holidays often intensify grief, especially in the first few years after loss. The combination of public observances, patriotic messaging, and well-meaning but sometimes painful comments from others can make these days particularly difficult. Your struggle doesn't mean you're grieving "wrong." It means you're navigating the genuine challenge of honoring service while carrying the weight of personal loss.
What do military families do to remember their loved ones?
Military families create diverse ways to remember and honor their loved ones. Many maintain connections through tangible memorials such as solidified remains, which allow them to keep their veteran close, share with family members across distances, and place in meaningful locations. Others focus on continuing their veteran's legacy through service, supporting military organizations, or helping other bereaved families. Some families develop annual traditions around significant dates, while others prefer spontaneous moments of remembrance. There is no prescribed way military families should remember. What connects these varied approaches is the intention to honor both the person's service and their individual identity beyond the uniform.
How can I support someone grieving a veteran on Veterans Day?
Supporting someone grieving a veteran on Veterans Day starts with recognizing that this day may be particularly difficult for them. Rather than generic "thank you for their service" statements, consider acknowledging the complexity: "I'm thinking of you today and remembering [name]." Ask whether they want company or prefer solitude. Some bereaved families appreciate invitations to public ceremonies, while others need space away from celebration. Be willing to sit with their grief without trying to fix it or rush them toward resolution. Practical support matters too: offering to handle tasks, checking in without requiring a response, or simply being present without expectation. The most helpful thing you can do is follow their lead about what they need.
What resources are available for military families dealing with grief?
Multiple resources specifically serve bereaved military families. The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) offers 24/7 support at 1-800-959-TAPS (8277), including peer networks and grief counseling connections. The Department of Veterans Affairs provides free bereavement counseling through Vet Centers for families of service members who died on active duty. Military OneSource offers confidential counseling and resources for all military families. Many installations have Family Readiness Groups and chaplain services trained in grief support. National organizations like the American Gold Star Mothers and Children of Fallen Patriots provide community and assistance. These resources recognize that military grief carries unique challenges and offer support specifically designed for bereaved military families.
Can grief from losing a veteran become complicated or prolonged?
Yes, grief from losing a veteran can develop into complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder. Military losses often involve sudden, traumatic circumstances, which research shows increases the risk of more challenging grief responses. Warning signs include intense grief that doesn't gradually lessen over time, persistent difficulty accepting the death, severe disruption to daily functioning, or feeling stuck in acute grief many months or years after the loss. This doesn't mean you're grieving incorrectly. It means you may benefit from specialized support. Complicated grief is treatable, and seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness. If you're concerned about your grief response or that of a family member, contact your healthcare provider, a VA Vet Center, or TAPS for guidance and support resources.
References
American Heart Association. (2025, May 23). Grief is never easy, but military families can bear added burdens. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2025/05/21/grief-is-never-easy-but-military-families-can-bear-added-burdens
Breen, L. J., & O'Connor, M. (2011). Family and social networks after bereavement: Experiences of support, change and isolation. Journal of Family Therapy, 33(1), 98-120.
Cozza, S. J., Chun, R. S., & Polo, J. A. (2010). Military families and children during operation Iraqi freedom. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 33(1), 195-207.
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.
Mental Health America. (2025, April 17). Bereavement and grief for military families and communities. https://www.mhanational.org/bereavement-and-grief-military-families-and-communities
Shear, M. K. (2015). Complicated grief. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(2), 153-160.
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197-224.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2023, October 30). The difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day. VA News. https://news.va.gov/125549/difference-between-veterans-day-memorial-day/
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2025). Experiencing grief or loss. https://vaccn.triwest.com/en/behavioral-health/tools-for-coping/experiencing-grief-or-loss/
Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (5th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
About the Editor
Cathy Sanchez Babao is a Grief Coach at Parting Stone, a grief educator, counselor, author, and columnist who has dedicated her career to helping individuals and families navigate loss. She writes the “Roots and Wings” column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and is the author of Heaven’s Butterfly and Between Loss and Forever: Filipina Mothers on the Grief Journey. Cathy holds a B.S. in Business Administration and Management from Ateneo de Manila University and an M.A. in Family Psychology and Education from Miriam College, with advanced grief training at the Center for Loss & Life Transition and the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University.
