Thank You to All U.S., Allied, and Coalition War Vets

My humble and sincere thanks to all veterans who have served to keep my country and my liberties safe. My heart goes out to all of you, especially to those who have made serious sacrifices. While I go about my daily business and snuggle down safe and sound in my bed, many of you are guarding a wall, battling with the enemy, or rescuing people off rooftops during a natural disaster. Some of you are tipping your last-call glasses of beer down in the halls of the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Your time of service has passed, yet a part of you lives always in the men and women who now serve. Some of you are praying, alone or in groups, that all sons and daughters, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, and parents are home by the next Veterans Day. You know He can grant your prayers, but it's unlikely given the evil in the world.

Many of you will march in parades -- some of you will be escorted in your wheelchairs -- and be either encouraged by the numbers of people who gather and wave flags along the parade route or disappointed by the numbers, which seem to dwindle more each year. But you should know that the intensity of pride and sincerity of gratitude from just a few who gather are much richer, fuller, and sweeter than all the speeches, blog posts,and five-minute clips on the late news hours.

Some of you are homeless. We can argue about whether you are crazy or on drugs or a victim of the recession or whatever it is that makes you chronically without shelter, but I am at a loss as to how this could happen in my country. With the billions of dollars we borrowed from the Chinese to give to banks and companies who turned around and thumbed their noses at us while they got massages and played golf at an exotic resort, we couldn't spare a couple or three to shelter people who, conscientiously or not, went and stood in the way of bullets when others did not? I apologize to you, for both looking the other way and not being sincere enough to promise you I will not do it again. But I know that you sacrifice to this day for what you did for your country and I live in the grace of your sacrifice.

Some of you are recuperating in a hospital, trying to recover physically, mentally, or spiritually. Some of you are being taken care of by people who care about you, and some of you were forced to endure deplorable conditions at a military hospital, where people were supposed to care for you and try to make you whole as possible, in the name of the American people whom you served. I cannot understand this breach of faith and I'm angered by it, as I believe other Americans were, but like other government-run horror shows it appears to have been easy to sweep under the rug.

I am one of those people who get a lump in their throat when they see an American flag backlit by the sun's rays. A sucker for icons, I get it when anyone plays the national anthem, even though I love "America the Beautiful" a thousand times better, or a color guard comes out onto a baseball field, or some jets fly over a memorial. The arresting sight of a string of motorcycle guards heading to a funeral to protect a grieving family from a bunch of evil nutcase protesters from a Topeka church makes me want to pull in line and follow them to their destination.

But I get downright weepy when I walk through the tombstones of Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, whether they mark the graves of Civil War soldiers, entire crews of planes shot down in World War II, or soldiers from other conflicts. And, even though some of the graves are for World War II and Vietnam vets from my own family, the the saddest to me are the newer graves of people who have died in recent wars.

I mourn those men and women who kept the wolf at bay.

And thank those who today still keep it from my door.