Summer time is just made for families, friends, and various outings. A breeze keeps the heat down, as a pair of young adults picnic by a river bank. Children laugh, as they play on the mega-gym in the playground. Older adults can be seen playing shuffle-board, while others pitch horseshoes. Not far away, there's a old-fashioned drive-in burger joint, and you almost make out the loud speaker as orders are called out. Making their way to a big parking lot, several custom cars, adorned with custom paint and shinny wheels, began arriving for their own car show.
Life goes on for most people in America. When it's not work, it's time with family and friends. Yep, life goes on, in seeming immunity from the cost paid each day by those who put on our nation's military uniforms. In some manner or other, our folks in the military stand at the ready to defend our freedoms. And to those families who suffer the greatest loss for such freedoms, life will never be the same. To those who pay the ultimate sacrifice, life will not go on.
Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and to those who connect the dots, July 4th, are dates which we acknowledge the costs of freedom. To the families of our military losses, it may not seem fair that life goes on ... without their loved one here to go on too.
Even in the hearts and minds of those who do come home, there's an emptiness for those who can't come home again ... ever. I remember vividly, coming home from my own war time experiences, and seeing "life going on". I would see everyday, people doing everyday things, and thought to myself (although near boiling to the surface), "What's wrong with you people? Don't you know that today, someone died so you can do what you're doing? Can't you stop and acknowledge that?"
Some do. Too few, I feel. Even flying our Flag, isn't done as much as it was right after 9-11-2001. It seemed that every house had a Flag out. Today, its maybe one in thirty. Or even less.
It's not that people don't care. I think some just get so wrapped up in their own lives, that it simply doesn't occur to them. Then there are those, with whom it's just too much trouble to even consider our Troops, our Veterans, or anyone else for that matter. And, there are those few who actually are anti-war, and they don't want anything to do with the Military, and that means even to acknowledge them in any way. Powerful freedom they have, isn't it. Agree or not with any military action, the fact such people can choose to be against those who actually help preserve those very freedoms, is actually puzzling to me. From the days at Concord and Lexington, there have been those who decry such acts of violence, yet live under the benefit of it. If they really believed what they protest against, they'd remove themselves from their freedoms, paid for in blood.
To those families with family and friends serving, and dying, for our freedoms, life does go on. Forgive us, as it just does, as it should. But along our way, we OWE it to remember those who have given so much, so we can enjoy the freedoms we have. And we MUST to our part politically, to see that those who stand at the ready with arms, are supported, and that WE will not let our freedoms slip away through the fingers of loose dealing politicians.
God Bless our Troops, their families, and God Bless America.
