Every Day is Veteran’s Day

Photo Provided by Becky Nelson
My mother always said to me “every day is Mother’s Day” when the May celebration rolled around. She said she didn’t want a card or a gift on Mother’s Day because her kids were gift enough. I always ignored her request, but now that I am older and a mother myself, I tend to agree. Every day is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Grandparent’s Day and Independence Day and President’s Day and every religious holiday and…Veteran’s Day. One does not stop being a mom or dad or grandpa or nurse or secretary or veteran on any given day. I hope that everyone recognizes their family members, acquaintances, friends and strangers with love and respect every day. I doubly hope it is so with our veterans. Coming from a family with a rich heritage of military service dating back to the American Revolution, we display a flag on our barn in memory and in appreciation for all those who served and made this nation the incredible place it is today.

After serving, our veterans tend to disappear into the crowd and become the moms and dads and grandpas and coworkers that we work with, shop with, share a beer with. But their experiences stay with them and change them and mold them into different people as they serve, and we need to remember and respect and support them every day. To some, the adjustment seems to come easier than others. My Dad did not face combat in the Cold War. I don’t know what he was like before he went in, but he tended not to talk about the uncomfortable things he did in the service…the tours of Auschwitz, the clean-up of German fields and homes and farms riddled with shrapnel and unexploded bombs and burned vehicles and the reminders of a horror beyond horrors that his friends faced during World War 2.

Two of his best friends served just a few years before him, one in Europe and one in the South Pacific during the horror of WWII that he was cleaning up. Both men buried the hurt and the pain and the suffering and the anguish and the fright they experienced, rarely talking about what they did and saw…but it was burned as a brand on their minds and their psyches. But sometimes they slipped and spoke of unimaginable fear suffered and pain endured and disgust at what man can do to man.

And I know that these thoughts never went away. My younger brother, a Navy veteran, sometimes tells stories of the friends and brothers he had in the military, but some of his and others close to him were sent on assignments as his crew headed inland to clean up bombings and nasty attacks of man upon man…and these rarely slip into his discussions. But when they do it is easy to see the anguish and pain and anxiety in his eyes. He broke his back in a fall on his ship and returned to duty before healing properly. He also lost a significant portion of his hearing aboard the aircraft carrier and now must wear hearing aids. The pain will never cease, the medical visits continue, and the remembrance of his service will always be in his mind, and the minds of our family. The sacrifices are deep for our vets. And the experience is a badge of honor as well. Putting your life on the line day in and day out as a service to your fellow Americans is an amazing sacrifice to the men and women…and their families…that serve. Our veterans touch us all, in war time and peace time, and they deserve our thanks every day, not just on Veteran’s Day.

The sacrifices made by our veterans are huge. The sacrifice of innocence, the sacrifice of control, the sacrifice of time and stability and perhaps limbs and comfort and always the sacrifice of who they were before. Those coming home with post-traumatic-stress-disorder carry this as a black scar and a deep wound…sometimes forever…and we need to be sensitive and caring and helpful in our vets healing. Flashbacks to the ugly, inability to sleep, anxiety, fear, anguish follow them as an invisible plague. They

leave as school kids and farm kids and young athletes and high school scholars and band members and football players and they come back veterans…all changed in a big way and all with a deserved pride and honor for protecting us and our nation.

So please, make Veteran’s Day your every day. Love them. Respect them. Thank them for their sacrifices for your personal security and comfort. Stand in awe of their service. Be thankful that you have the tremendous freedom you enjoy and often take for granted for without our veterans’ sacrifices, we would not enjoy these freedoms. Thank you to my veteran friends and family and all the veterans I have never met but to whom I owe my everlasting gratitude. May God Bless you all and may God Bless America.