Veterans Day

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed." Dwight D. Eisenhower

I found this statement from President Eisenhower interesting, given that he was a General in World War II. Recently I talked to a Vietnam veteran, and he said he hates war. Then he added that no one hates war as much as a man who has fought in one.

Today is Veterans Day, and those who have served our country deserve to be honored and appreciated. Some made the ultimate sacrifice, and those who come home often find the transition into civilian life difficult. What can we do, what can I as an individual do, to make sure it is a little easier for them?

At work when a customer uses a credit card, I ask to see ID. Sometimes I am shown a military ID, and try to always say "Thank you for your service." Yesterday a woman showed me her military ID, and I saw that she was a dependent. I thanked her for her service, and she said, "Oh, it's my husband." I replied that my son was in the Air Force for eight years, and the families are serving and sacrificing, too. She seemed surprised that someone would acknowledge that, and thanked me for saying it.

It's true, though, isn't it? Even those of us who are not veterans are connected to veterans as family members, friends and neighbors. We are all in this together. I know part of who we are as Americans is that we value individualism, but I think sometimes we take it too far and to our own detriment. For when we feel connected, when we understand that we are all brothers and sisters here in this nation, and on this planet, maybe we would decide to take better care of each other.

Happy Veterans Day.

Susan

"He Ain't Heavy" written by Bob Russell and Bobby Scott.

Betrayal

"Not to transmit an experience is to betray it." Elie Wiesel

Yesterday was National Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was working on a post, but I didn't publish it because it really didn't say what I wanted it to say. I guess you and I are comfortable enough with each other now, I guess you know me well enough now that I am good with just putting it out there with no need to impress you. So here it is unfinished, unvarnished, unedited.

My parents' generation was the one that fought in World War II. My own father didn't. I'm not quite sure why and he is not alive anymore for me to ask him. I think I vaguely remember something about his blood pressure being too low to pass the physical. I have low blood pressure (that always pleases my doctor) so it could be the case.

That generation doesn't talk about what they experienced, what they saw, what they did. I had a client years ago who was a Pearl Harbor survivor. Seventeen years old at the time (he had lied about his age to enlist) and he told me, "I peed my pants."

I understand their stoicism. Those people who were children during the Great Depression, who came of age during World War II, well they like their secrets. Maybe some of it is wanting to give us, their children, a better life, and why burden us with the gruesome details of war? Perhaps some of it is they were men who were raised not to cry, not to show emotion, and recounting their experiences would take them to a place men aren't supposed to go.

It is a betrayal to keep those secrets. They aren't betraying me or my kids or my grandkids. They are betraying themselves. One of my professors said that the worst violation is to deny someone their reality or truth. There are those people in the world today who think the Holocaust was a hoax. I'm shaking my head here. I have experienced just a sliver of man's (human's) inhumanity to man (humans.) Just a tiny sliver compared to those like Elie Wiesel, who as a young boy lost his family, went on to live in a concentration camp and then to speak of the unspeakable. To deny him his truth betrays him all over again. To deny those brave men and women, who are becoming all too few, their reality of what life was really like in the 1930's and 1940's their truth, is the worst betrayal.

I am thankful for people like Wiesel who have told their stories, who have shared their truths, who have opened up that ugly can of worms, who have shared their pain with the world. I hope we learn from them. Never again. Never again.

Susan