Editor’s note: Marcy O’Brien is in New England with family graduation festivities. Parts of this column have appeared previously.

Memorial Day was a particularly important day of remembrance for my mother. Every year, she made sure we wore commemorative red poppies to honor her youngest brother, the family hero.

Kenneth Arthur MacMillan was the youngest of four children. When their mother died, my mother, Alberta, was 6 and the siblings were 4, 2 and baby Kenny was months old. He never knew his mother who spent the last months of her life in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Alberta remembered the only time her mother ever spoke from her window, noting that Kenny’s bright auburn hair was the same color as Alberta’s. “I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins,” she laughed.

Alberta actually gave Kenneth his nickname, Buddy. With her mother’s health ebbing, many baby-tending duties fell to Alberta. Feeding, bathing, diapering, she did what she could to help – for her special little Buddy. She told me, “He was easy to love and care for, an adorable, happy baby.”

After their mother died in 1925, the family was split, the children never to live together again. Within months, their father consented to Buddy’s adoption thinking it might be a better start for the little boy. He never told my adoring mother that her baby brother was gone – adopted to Canada. Eventually the other children all went “on the city,” placed in foster homes.

Buddy’s adoptive parents had been unable to have children. But within months of Kenny’s arrival, the young Canadian father became jealous of the baby. His wife was totally enamored with the new love in her life. Eventually, the husband gave her an ultimatum: “Either he goes, or I do.” Buddy, the abandoned toddler, was returned to a Boston foster home.

Alberta, devastated when her Buddy was adopted, was thrilled he was returned and visited him devotedly. The children were scattered in four different foster homes across metropolitan Boston. Their father visited infrequently. It was a mean, tough childhood.

Kenneth grew into a tall, rangy boy – with a disarming crooked grin. Alberta was his solace, his always reliable anchor. And he admired his big brother, Chester. In 1942, soon after America declared war, Chester enlisted. Kenneth, fresh-faced kid out of high school at 17, followed him. When his age was questioned, he declared his birthdate as April 1, 1921 … 3 years before his real birthdate. Kenneth was deployed to Europe, Chester to the South Pacific.

By then, Alberta had married and I was born mere weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I found a picture of toddler me with both uncles in new uniforms, fresh from basic training. Devoted to her brothers, Mom wrote to them on alternating days. She sent cookies, comic books, and film. They wrote when they could, often receiving 4 or 5 of her letters during one mail call.

My mother loved the song “My Buddy,” a tune from World War I. She sang its sentimental verses throughout my childhood:

“Nights are long since you went away

I think about you all through the day

My buddy, my buddy…”

Kenneth’s mostly hard-knock life ended tragically two years into his enlistment; he was driving a tank in France when a Luftwaffe bomb landed a direct hit. My mother was notified only when a letter was returned with the word “deceased” written across the envelope. No two soldiers had arrived at the door with the announcement. Hysteria preceded her grief as she learned her Buddy was buried in France.

It wasn’t until 1949 that he was disinterred and brought to the States. In a world rife with red tape, this Boston boy was buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery overlooking sparkling San Diego Bay. My mother tapped her meager savings to fly to the ceremony. Years later, when I lived in San Diego, I visited Uncle Kenneth’s sunlit grave often. I always left with a sense of familial peace, but never without regretting the wrong birthdate on his stone. Or that he was 3000 miles from his family’s home.

In my mother’s last days in the hospice house, she said, “I’m looking forward to seeing my buddy again.” It took me a minute, and then, remembering, I sang the song with her. She smiled through her tears.

All I have today of my Uncle Kenneth are his Purple Heart, the framed citation signed by FDR, and a few sepia-toned snapshots. I wish I had really known him, heard his easy laugh, been teased by that crooked grin. I missed you, Uncle Buddy.

I never understood how young 20 is until I raised children. That’s when a family realizes that there is no good age to lose – to sacrifice – your child. And all you have forever is memories.

Never forget.

Marcy O’Brien can be reached at moby.32@hotmail.com