The long Memorial Day weekend is, we tell ourselves, a time for reflection on the blood shed and the lives sacrificed in this country’s open-ended fight for freedom. While we use the leisure time the holiday affords us to reflect also on our grill options — hamburgers, hot dogs, or chicken — all the good food and good times at Memorial Day picnics never totally distracts us. On the contrary, the good life realized in the security and peace of a sunny Connecticut backyard only seems to deepen our debt to those Memorial Day solemnly commemorates.

This year, Memorial Day also gives us an opportunity to reflect on how we might make payment on that debt. The holiday does not have to be entirely about the past. As history has repeatedly shown us, freedom is never completely bought and paid for. We are taught in childhood that freedom’s gift to us is choice. It gives us the right to choose what to believe, what to say and to whom (or when to remain silent), where to live, what to read, where or whether to pray, and ultimately who we will be. Ironically, today and in the future we must pay for this right to choose by shouldering our responsibility to choose. Not every choice is an easy one.

We all know about the tough choices that lie at the heart of Memorial Day when for the sake of sacred principle peace-loving people choose to take up arms to fight, to die, and what for some is an even harder choice: to kill other human beings. There are also tough choices made by those whose conscience tells them not to fight, to defy authority, violence, and force even at the risk of denunciation, personal safety, and, in some circumstances, incarceration. These extreme choices by individuals, fraught with the possibility of personal sacrifice, endow and secure freedom of choice for all of us.

On the day after this long holiday weekend, May 30, Newtowners have the responsibility to make a choice on a proposed budget of $95,370,206 to finance public education and municipal services. We have supported two previous budgets that failed in referendum votes, and we support this one as well. More than that, however, we support the will of the people of Newtown when it comes to allocating their own tax dollars. We will be watching once again to see if the overwhelming majority of eligible voters choose not to vote, as they have done twice before. We want those people to remember that the choice not to vote — the easy choice — only deepens our debt to those we commemorate this weekend.

The polls are open from 6 am to 8 pm on Tuesday. Vote and make a payment on the future of freedom.