Sacrifices

To Tony and Margaret, who walked among veterans' graves last weekend and placed flags on their graves; to my father, who fought in World War II; to my half-brothers Dominick and Nicky, each of whom was a soldier. Dominick did a 2-year tour of duty in Vietnam. To my Uncle Larry Himes, deceased but not forgotten, a soldier of the United States Army who also fought in war.
To Dante, who served in the United States Marine Corps and was called up for the first Gulf War and to our darling friend Joel, who is in Baghdad as we speak...I salute you this Memorial Day weekend.
I am a child of the military, the daughter of a soldier, the wife of a soldier, the sister and friend of soldiers.
I am a recipient of its values and of its errors.
Men who have surrounded me all my life are decidedly military men, soldiers who have trained and fought and sacrificed. It's as natural for me to think militarily as it is for me to breathe.
And where there isn't a soldier in my family, there is someone helping a soldier. Mother-in-law Margaret rates cases for veterans through Veterans' Affairs and determines if their medical problems have a connection to their service.
As I look at the state of our country in 2008, I don't forget the sacrifices made by veterans.
I'm not saying that we're perfect here in the United States, by any stretch of the imagination.
We have our problems.
But we cannot forget that our country was built on the many sacrifices of soldiers and their families. If we lose sight of that, then we lose sight of our history and that is a very dangerous thing.
The very freedom we possess is the result of the blood, sweat and tears of soldiers and their families.
We have a lot of things to correct in our current American society; there is a problem when so many of our citizens are underinsured or uninsured medically.
Health insurance, as with education, should be a fundamental human right, neither of which should ever gain status as a luxury of middle or upper middle class or rich social strata.
Which country is the human social experiment that has it all figured out? We don't know. But when you look around the world and see the current problems like the repressive junta in Myanmar and the dictatorship that suppresses Zimbabwe, you have to be grateful for this American life.