Monday, February 8, 2021

being patriotic in today's world.

A few days ago I went to visit two very good 
and close friends, You may have read something I have written
in the past about them,
I call them Hubster and Sister Wife, Linda and Lionelle.
They are two of my very best friends here in Plaquemine
and they got their names when I became single and Hubster
helped me so much with things I needed help with at
the Cottage. When I got sick, they loaned me their pulse Ox
machine (they both had Covid before me, thankfully didn't need
hospitalization) Linda picked up prescriptions I needed while
I was sick, made me a chicken soup
 and when I got back from the hospital with very little 
appetite, it was Hubster and sister wife I called to 
pick me up the only thing I was craving, Ritz Cracker and Rouse's chicken salad.
Delivered almost before I could hang up the phone.
When you have friends like this, consider yourself blessed
I am blessed to have many.
Long introduction to where I am going with this.
As I was leaving their home after finally visiting and returning
things they loaned me they followed me outside as they normally
do. Linda reminded me that my brake tag was expired
(for the third year in a row, lol)
and Hubster began to show me his new telescopic flag pole.
Oh my!!! I immediately had to have one!
Sister wife went me the link and it has been ordered

Once it comes in, it will be hubster to help me cement it in.
I had been looking for a pole such as this for a long time.
I didn't want a flag pole on my cottage and
I wanted a pole that I could raise and lower by myself.
This one does just that. To say I was excited was beyond belief.
Now to get to the meat of the blog.
My Daddy fought in WWII. It was many years before I was born
but he did have little children at home. My Mom ran their 
bar room and raised the children in that said bar.
I do not know exactly how many years he was in war,
but he was shot in his leg and which went through one thigh
and into the other lodging somewhere in the second thigh.
He told us many times, it was the best day of his life.
He knew he was either coming home or was going to die.
He had already lost his younger brother to the war and
many cousins and friends. 
As I came into this family when my parents were 43 and 45
I was a spoiled treasure to them and to my 6 siblings.
We always had a flag up. Sometimes it was on a pole,
when my second brother returned for Vietnam, it was 
a large flag place right one the front of our home,
spread out for all to see our brother was coming home.
We were a very patriotic family.
As I grew up, having had my Dad, two brothers who served
and then my exhubby who served, and knowing many others
who also served I wanted a flag that long ago.
WE always talked about wanting one, but we just never did it.
Then came the day that my sisters and my Mother decided
to take a trip to visit my oldest brothers burial site.
Although he died of lung cancer a few month before the visit,
he had also served during the Vietnam crisis.
His children live in Texas and they decided they wanted him buried
in a military graveyard.
My mom by this time, was 89 and dementia was beginning to
reek havoc on her brain. 
Myself and my sisters, My Mom and my brothers children and their Mother
were joyful before we got to the cemetery.
Yet the minute you began to walk the cemetery there was a peace
of the place. I got the sense, that no talking was needed here,
all these thousands of gravesites was someone who had
 fought for our Country, for our freedom and either died in that battle,
or like my brother died many years later but served his country.
We did not know how Momma was going to take seeing the 
grave site of her second oldest child, her first son.
AS we all walked up to his place, we took a step back and my Mother,
all 120 pounds of her found his name and we were witness to 
one of the most saddest and proudest times of my life.
She placed her hand on his cold piece of marble and cried.
Tears running down her face she traced his name with
her finger. IT was not what we expected but we let this 
Mother and Child have their time before we too, went to comfort her.
This day will forever be etched in my mind.
No words had to be spoken as the silence said it all:
No parent should ever have to bury their child.
On that day, still too long ago, I knew
I wanted a flag, talked about it, looked for the perfect one,
but still years passed. I rarely watch the news, it scares me and
I never know what is real and what is not, but while I was in the
hospital, days before the inauguration, with nothing
else to to I put the TV on CNN.
It was the very first time I was the breaking in to our
Nation's Capitol, in to the Senate area.
I believe in freedom to march and stand for what you 
believe in, but breaking in, going up to the podium 
covered in animal fur, wanting "selfies"
using our American flag to drape their bodies
in it for more photos, I was sickened.
I was for the first time, embarrassed to be an American.
That flag, that symbolized all the Peace and Freedom my 
Father and Brothers and many others faught for,
being Mocked by people who broke in to a place
they had no business being at that time.
Again, my blog, my opinion.
I cried, right there in my hospital bed, maybe having a
lot to do with the fact that both myself and KD's
dad, Frank were getting better. 
That day I KNEW this flag business was going to happen.
I didn't care how it was going to hang but It was
going to be in my yard for all to see to see
I am a a Proud American.
The fact that days later I find the pole I need
Tells me many above me including the Big Man agree.



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