The Veterans' Gift

Slowly I walked through Arlington National Cemetery.  I had been there about a month before as I escorted a widow to her husband's final resting place after a long, slow death from Parkinson's. We found her husband's marker--the very first time that she had seen it. She tried to hide the tear in the corner of her eye--so I pretended not to see it.  In the silence of the moment, the newly marked grave made him a part of nearly 500,000+ veteran's who said, "Welcome home! Be at rest with us in the ground of our nation we have served."  
 

 And for his wife?  The gift of countless years that death could not erase...that even then she was finding ever so slowly as a new source of life for her. 

Let us pause for that community that extends around the world--our veterans who paid the ultimate price for the gift of freedom in which we live this Veteran's Day 2013.