military sacrifices

Memorial Day – To My Daddy

Posted on by Helena

Dear Daddy,

I wanted to thank you for sacrificing your life, your health, your honor, your emotions, your heart, your limbs for this country that we call the Land of The Free. I wanted you to know that everything you did ‘mattered’, it made a difference, it gave hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions the chance to live when you had to die.

I wanted to say that the burning hole that filled your heart was not in vain and that despite the vagrancies of a few self consumed children, there are many, more than many, who truly appreciate that you gave your life so that we could live. Do not be grieved. Do not be fearful that we are a fallen country, that your sacrifice was in vain, for even if you saved one life, it was more than anyone else can claim. What we seem to have forgotten is that to save even One, is worth the consequence of that action.

I wanted to say that even though you had such a short life, and you had such high spirits to find salve for the brokenness inside you, you made a huge impact on one life – mine. When I am down, I think of you. When I am in trials, I think of you. When I am melancholy, I look at your picture and I find peace. You were an amazing dad. An amazing man.

You were stricken with multiple cancers. You suffered miserably. Your heart was broken by the terror you witnessed, and yet, you were able to try and put it behind you, more pain, more suffering, more violence than most experience in twenty lifetimes. Thank you daddy. I wish I could soften that pain.

I think of you every day even though you passed nearly forty years ago. I think of how you were my personal savior, my hero, my strength, my rock amidst the storms. I miss you terribly and wish you could help guide me through my own trials, but take comfort in knowing that you are still with me in spirit, if not in the physical form.

Thank you daddy.

I know that sometimes you had fun while serving this country, sometimes you found humor, and sometimes you found death and hardship, but you persevered – until God took you while you were yet so young, I know that you watch over me every single day of my life. I want you to know that your sacrifice means everything to us even if some of us don’t see it – but have patience, one day, I believe they will come around and see how much you gave for them, for me, for all of us. One day, they will come to understand that each man is unique to his calling, and that while there are the few who fail, there are many more who are so incredibly self sacrificing, so giving, so focused on making this world a place of good, that the Hillarys and the Obamas and the Bills and the Nixons and the Jacksons, and the Johnsons, well they are just a fly to be swat in the scheme of things. They are nothing. The proverbial specks of sand…

I wish you could be here today with your grandchildren and great grandchildren and even great-great grandchildren! What a legacy you have created, a vine of love, and of honor and of respect, that I can not ever be anything but humbled by your heart.

Thank you daddy.

I wish I had been older and wiser and could have asked you more questions, and listened harder, learned deeper and held your hand more often. I wish I could have you near me now in my trials and ask for your advice. I will forever hold you as my hero, and will try to honor your name through my children, their children, and for generations beyond. I will pass on everything I know in stories and anecdotes and hopefully, your memory will be passed for eternity to come.

Dear Daddy, I really wish you were here with me today, because I’ve made so many stupid mistakes and I think maybe I would have been better if you had been there to guide me and set my path straighter. Because right now it really, really sucks.

I wish the military had been brighter and more compassionate toward their people. I wish that you had not been a guinea pig in the Nevada nuclear tests. I wish that I could have learned more than the whisper of time I was given. I wish you could have had the wishes you wished for in your life and that maybe I could have shared some of those with you.

But most of all – I wish you were here with me today to take away the pain and make it right like you always did – because you were my – hero. And I miss you so terribly.

Thank You -obama,ptsd,military

Posted on by Helena

I was thinking about PTSD. I was thinking how it can alter a brains’ very chemistry structure and create – it’s own. I was thinking how PTSD offers the divine and beautiful hope in God. I was thinking – you couldn’t get much closer on this earth than all the military soldiers who have fought for us to the complete and utter sacrifice of themselves.

How complete. Most of us could never imagine!  Amazing!!

Me, I’m an artiste. I think in realms. But there are these pragmatic mindsets that are so completely devotionally giving that their life is a part of the contract. We accept them – as our security – our military. And I believe 99% of them have the most golden of hearts God would never reject them. But, as in all things, it is the few. It is the few that inject into our society a new norm, a new agenda, a new morality. And each time we cave. How can we be so strong… and yet so weak?

The same reason we get up after we fall, brush ourselves off, and vow to try a bit better – next time.

I try to imagine the PTSD after WWII where my father fought as a Colonel of a tank battalion. He never outwardly showed any PTSD aggravation, but I can’t imagine he didn’t harvest it internally. The Glass’s were – are a very proud genealogy. We do not like to show weakness, and would therefore prefer to suffer in isolation. Weird, but it is who we are.

While my father must have experienced great pain during his tenure in WWII, he never really alluded to this weakness in our presence. And I think some of my brother’s therefore had no concept of who he was so much a who he was expected to be for them. A doomed expectation. They could never see him, they could only concentrate on what they were denied. A pivotal spiral that has no win.  But I had One.

Still, somehow, he rose above. He climbed past the grotesque images, and the horrific memories, and he was a great father to me. In fact, I think he was so good, he could have been an incredible inspiration to the masses of young people. Because he embodied the precept ‘I am here’. And he was. Amazing. I imagine my strength in diversity certainly comes from him. My ability to persevere, as my son says, definitely comes from him.

So, to you the men of honor and integrity and value – to you the men who sacrifice and live the memories, to you the men who have been our shield, our sword, our honor, our life, thank you!!! Sometimes we take for granted that which is most precious.  And I don’t want my appreciation to be shallow.