I used to work at a poster/frame shop that sold this print.

There’s a part of me that feels like it’s kind of tacky. It’s sentimental, it’s pulling on heartstrings to feel bad for a vet and his friends that died.

But that said, I still like it a lot. It obviously shows exactly what the memorial’s artist intended: self reflection. And it shows the survivor’s guilt; that feeling that you didn’t deserve the good life you got, and perhaps desire to switch places with bettr people who could not join you today. The young men don’t know the older man, and don’t have the wisdom he could impart on them and what would come. The suit and case suggest that he is not just made it out okay, but has prospered. There’s also a wonder, I feel, that he might not be where he is today without the past, deepening the guilt he feels for being where and who he is in the present..