I'm a few days late, but if you live in freedom thank a veteran.
For those who don't know I'm the son of a disabled veteran. My father was special operations on the ground for the USAF in Vietnam, and while he came back whole of body, I believe a deeper part of him was cracked over there, and broken many years later.
My dad is often hard to deal with, and always opinionated (much like myself,) and many people have difficulty relating to him. However, I've had many a long serious talks with him, and while I'm not going to go into specifics for fear that he would feel betrayed by what I write here, or if certain people read comments out of context they would be hurt, I want to shed some light on this wounded warrior.
I don't know specifics about what my father saw over-seas, and in all honesty I probably don't want to know. I have watched over the years the mental toll it has taken upon this man however. I've watched him go from an energetic, nothing can stop him, life loving man who was, not-a-perfect-but-none-the-less-good father and husband, into a man who is bitter, and angry at most of the world because it can't/won't adjust/accept to him, and he's bent and compromised so much for it.
My father is diagnosed with PTSD, and doesn't handle stress well. This man who once went on missions with few men, and limited supplies, and made decisions that literally were life and death (including later civilian Air Traffic Control for 16 years), now has trouble dealing with the stress involved in making a call to a company to cancel a service because they won't listen when he says to end the service and repeatedly ignore his pleas to end the service and continue to try to give a sales pitch to keep him as a customer.
There are thousands if not millions of these walking wounded who have given the best of their life for this country, and had the rest of it ruined by our callous nature and inability to bend down and help prop them up in society. Yes there is a VA that is doing it's best to help them. However, if you turn on the news and wait eventually you'll hear stories about these warriors who are stuck in molding rooms, those who are from the Vietnam War being set aside to treat those with PTSD from the current war. The reason isn't that the staff doesn't care, it's that we as a country don't.
I've talked recently to my father and he says from the care he's seeing at the VA these are isolated incidents, blown out of proportion for gain by one person or another. From our talks the VA has made leaps and bounds in the level of service they show those who seek them. However we as a society under-fund them and place a scarlet letter upon the chest of those who seek the treatment they need.
How many of us have watched someone get out of a car with disabled plates, that then walks into the store and grumbled that they didn't need that spot. I know I have, more than once. I never thought that maybe that person wears their scars on their heart. That maybe instead of a broken back, they have a broken marriage because a spouse couldn't stand one more outburst. Maybe instead of an oxygen cart they haul behind them images that those who were in their situation can't imagine. Maybe the sound of a car backfiring could trigger a flashback to something so traumatic it's been blocked out by the mind to protect the person who shares a skull with it. These people may have invisible wounds and/or physical or mental pain and really DO need that spot, even if you have to walk an extra 10 feet.
My dad would say he didn't do anything special, when the truth is he gave everything in his world. Cut him some slack.
