When the Sky Falls Silent: A Remembrance Day Reflection

My grandmother met my grandfather, a Canadian soldier, in England during World War II. Within that span, they married, and she became pregnant with my uncle. She once told me a story about moving from London to Bath when she was 6 months pregnant because the bombs kept waking her up, and she was not getting enough sleep.

For most of my life, that story felt like something from another world. But recently, I’ve found myself thinking of her each time I open Instagram and see Rosy, a young woman in Gaza who documents her life under siege.

Rosy’s Instagram account, @roseyingaza, began as a space to share joy—simple, everyday beauty. But when war broke out, her feed transformed into a diary of survival. 

She films what remains of her home: broken windows, collapsed staircases, laundry hung between cracked walls. You can hear the hum of drones in the distance, the hollow thud of explosions. There’s no soundtrack, just life unfolding inside the ruins.

When I watch her videos, I see my grandmother in her, folding clothes under the trembling of the ceiling, trying to keep hope alive when the sky cannot be trusted. The difference between them is time, not humanity.

We like to believe peace is permanent, that it’s something we have, not something we keep. Here in Canada, our skies are quiet. Our nights are filled with snow and geese, not sirens and smoke. It’s easy to let Remembrance Day slip into nostalgia: to pin on a poppy, bow our heads, and then return to our ordinary lives.

But remembrance was never meant to be easy. It’s meant to wake us up.

When we remember, we do more than honour names etched into monuments. We remember what they fought for, and what many people still fight for: safety, dignity, and the right to live without fear.

True remembrance isn’t confined to history. It is an act of empathy that reaches across generations and borders, that asks: how do we honour those who endured war if we turn away from those enduring it now?

It’s tempting to scroll past the images of Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan, to protect our peace by not looking too closely. But Rosy’s videos make avoidance impossible. She doesn’t just show us rubble; she shows us persistence. Children laughing amid dust. A cup of tea brewed on a camp stove. The human spirit, still insisting on beauty.

Watching her, I understand my grandmother’s story differently. It isn’t just about fear; it’s about the courage to carry on, the will to make life where death has staked its claim.

So on this Remembrance Day, I hold both gratitude and grief. Grateful that my daughter has never run to a shelter. Grateful that I can walk outside without flinching at the sound of planes circling above. And grief, for those whose skies are still heavy with history repeating itself.

To remember well is not only to look back, it is to look around. Peace is not a relic of the past; it is a living responsibility.

So this year, as we bow our heads, may we do more than whisper Lest we forget. May we remember the tenderness of human lives caught in conflict, then and now. May we remember that peace is fragile, and empathy is its truest form of defence. May we remember that remembrance itself is an act of love: a refusal to look away, a commitment to stay awake.

Because one day, someone might look back at our silence the way we look at old photographs, wondering what we did when the sky began to fall again.

Lest we forget. And lest we ever stop paying attention.