These are the last Pics from this weekends trip to Occupy Boston. My partner was sure that all he would want to do is go down there, drop off our donations, walk around and then leave and have a pint of beer at the bar. Instead what happened was that we became captivated by the speakers at the rally, and then we went and got a pint. When we were down there a group from (I thought it was militarysuiside.org or com but I'm having trouble finding their web site) were talking. Anyway, this guy talked for quiet a while about post traumatic stress disorder and military suicides. He reminded everyone that there is no way that any of us can know or fully understand what our soldiers went through, saw, or had to do while deployed. He asked us to make sure that we don't let our friends and family who are returning from war push us away. If they are quiet, if they are sullen, if they are "changed", just accept them, love them, include them, and try to help or get help for them.
After his talk a mother and father of a kid (he was about 22) who committed suicide spoke. That's when I started to tear up. This is what I remember of their shared experience. They talked about how their son had been "aggressively recruited". This was pre-Iraq war. They talked about how he and his troop were one of the first deployed to Iraq and about the first time they felt a bomb go off close to their camp at night. They read from his letters home where he tried to spare them all the pain and misery, but would allude to other letters he had written that they would read if he died. They talked about when he returned home, about how he at first seemed just like their son prior to the war. He changed. After a while they started to notice that he was depressed, they tried to get him to the VA, but he was worried about what the military would think. I believe that they finally got him to go, but one day his son asked him if he could sit in his lap and be rocked. Later that night he killed himself. He was younger than my little brother who is about to become a father for the first time. It is sad to think that this kid, who was willing to go to war for us, and willing to give his life for our country will never be able to experience the life of freedoms that he fought for.
I understand that we need to have a military, and I understand that our military does do many great deeds overseas that we never really hear about. I once got to talk to a guy who while in the military received a PhD in Civil Eng. He was part of the crew who first went into Bosnia after the war to start rebuilding the towns. He was also part of the crew who got to hand over the keys to the town once the building was complete. I was blessed to hear his story and get to talk to him. Stories like this are uplifting and show how much potential for good our military has. However I do feel at times, to be honest at many times, that we and our representatives forget that our military is made up of people, and many young people at that. Asking them to go to war, to see people die, to kill people, is a huge request and one that I feel is many times taken too lightly. During my lifetime I have never been for a war that we were in. That said I am so thankful for those who choose to enlist and fight in the name of our country. I could not. So thank you to those who do, try to stay safe and if you need anything, just ask.
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