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Each head stone represents a shattered family. It's easy to forget or dismiss this part of the tremendous cost of our wars, some fought to preserve our approximation of democracy, others to impose our ideal of it upon those who have not yet received the great blessing. Is Democracy a concept or a euphemism? Is it a commodity we can or even should export? Can it exist at the national level or does it really only exist in its pure form at the local level? In any case, preserving it, fighting for it, exporting and defining it all has a very real cost. I'm not glorifying the wars we fight or even the sacrifices made by everyone lying beneath each one of these headstones. I am just remembering that each one of these people died, at least in part, to preserve or promote this thing we call Democracy.

Can any single image capture what democracy is? I doubt it. I thought long and hard before submitting a photograph of headstones but, in the end, these are not just grave markers. Every culture honors their dead in their own way. People die every day in countless ways. These are different. These people died for something specific. I think they died for democracy. If I am to understand what that is and what it really means, I have to accept that this part of it.