A CHAOS Lab Memorial Day Reflection

We don’t usually do sentimental at the CHAOS Lab.
This isn’t a place for polished speeches or patriotic clichés. We’re more about microbial combat, field kits packed like go-bags, and sequencing while Slipknot screams in the background. Most days, the soundtrack is chaos. Controlled, focused, and always on mission.

But Memorial Day hits different. And yeah, we’re gonna pause for a second.

Before there were grant deadlines, geochemical maps, and -80°C freezers… some of us wore a different kind of uniform. We operated in different labs—ones made of sand, steel, and silence. We learned to read the terrain, make hard calls, and run toward the fire when others ran away. And some of our people? They never got to take that uniform off. They never came home to chase another dream, build another lab, or argue about who drank the last energy drink in the break room.

Memorial Day isn’t about us.
It’s not about flexing our trauma or spotlighting sacrifice.
It’s not about the perfect quote, the best post, or some sanitized narrative.

It’s about them.

The ones who didn’t get a second chapter.
The ones who stood watch so the rest of us could pivot careers, raise hell in science, and keep fighting in a different way.

Sure—people celebrate the long weekend in different ways. Barbecue. Beach. Binge a horror movie marathon while trying to finish your poster session slides. No judgment. That kind of freedom—the space to choose how you live—that’s part of what they fought for.

But here in the lab? We take a beat.
We don’t hang flags on every wall.
We don’t have to.
The mission is stitched into our bones.

We honor them not with hashtags, but with the way we work—gritty, relentless, uncompromising.
We remember by building something worthy.
By showing up.
By keeping the promises they never got to finish.

Because science, at its best, is service.
It protects. It rebuilds. It saves.
And that kind of service doesn’t stop when the uniform changes.
It just evolves.

So today, we remember.
And tomorrow, we get back to it—harder, smarter, louder.

In memory of the ones who won’t see another dawn—
We work harder.
We dig deeper.
We fight forward.

Always.

Carry the mission with you.