(Reprinted and reposted with permission for an eighth straight year from, well, me.)
You have to admit that, despite the ongoing partisan slap-fights and political in-fighting and every other really crappy thing going on, we have a pretty damn good life, living in these United States of America. It’s a far-from-perfect country, but, dammit, it’s ours. Ours because our own have and will continue to shed their blood in the ultimate sacrifice. Gave and will continue to give their lives, their hopes, their dreams so that we -- and our children and our children’s children and their children -- may live and realize ours and theirs.
As you go about your day today, doing whatever it is that you do on Memorial Day, take a second or two or sixty — or more — to reflect on what exactly this day is all about.
Please. Just take a moment. Take a moment to God bless those who have given so much.
God bless those who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom we enjoy day-in and day-out.
God bless those hundreds of thousands of millions who’ve lost fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters in the ultimate sacrifice paid forward to every single one of us, for our freedoms.
And thank you — thank you, thank you, thank you with every fiber of my being — to those who continue serving this country and keep this great nation safe.
And, again, God bless families torn apart and made lesser by the heartbreaking losses, hellish and unthinkable holes in the soul that allow us to do whatever the hell it is we want to on this day and every other day of the year…