Veterans’ Day 2008: The Curse of “See-through-ish” and The Cure

The Walking Wounded

What can be done for the literally quarter million homeless vets wandering the highways and byways of our country, those who often walk miles every day and who have feet that look like bleeding lumber?

The issue of homeless vets appears to be similar somehow to poverty in pockets of Appalachia, the poverty in the outback of the Navajo Reservation and up to Rosebud… the abject poverty through much of the tobacco belt in the South.

So much resource is thrown at it all. But, somehow, something is missing. Something, but what? For the issues persist. I don’t pretend to know the fix, but I do know some of the helps.

Us.

One help is vision correction. For, in some regard, we too often develop an accidental but severe case of ‘see-through-ish,‘

…that is, we, the watcher-helpers of this poor old world, no longer see what stands right before us; we mentally erase the disheveled, the tattered sign-carrying, the addicted, the ill… as one of those chronic issues that ‘will always be with us.’

I can sometimes feel it coming over me as well, and I resist that idea of “the poor will always be with us,’ if instead of it being a clarion call to action, that phrase is used instead to put us to sleep, for the phrase can sound so peaceful a phrase, so tidy, so wise.

But, it’s not necessarily. That phrase can be, instead, a powerful and poisonous soporific.

Yet, taking on helping whatever stands right before us, within our reach, is the only mighty spell-breaker we have for our spells of see-through-ish.

Thus, four days ago, 60 working women and men veterans, including my husband ( 21 year USAF partially disabled veteran,) did just that– broke through see-through-ish. Again.

They got out their sinew and gut, their bandages and iron thread, revved up their pickup trucks and vans, and helped to mend the part of the world within their reach.

With the help of the VA, Vet’s groups, homeless shelters, churches, they went out into the streets and under the bridges and along the small forests on the Platte River, bringing homeless vets in from the cold, every last one they could find.

Some homeless vets came willingly; some had to be cajoled, some were angry– why now, why not long ago? Many were literally growing moss in their beards, some were loaded, some were mentally compromised, many had infections, some were so sick they had to be dead-man carried. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother. Yes.

This is what happened next… It could easily be made to happen where you live, too… mending up the part of the world within our reach…

The vets who were on the streets these many years were brought to the local Armory in buses, and van after van, pickup after pickup. Getting out of the vehicles, the homeless vets might seem to some like a bent-over forest of slow moving Ents–craggy, unshaven, earth-drubbed men with haunted eyes, trusting, but not trusting, hopeful but in some ways feeling no hope for eons.

There were A1C tests for the men with diabetes, which are many among the homeless… with written helps given of where to go for meds on their VA benefits, many of the vets never having applied for or used what dwindling resource of veteran’s benefits were left to them.

Wounds, gashes and lacerations were gently washed and ministered to. Teeth were pulled, canalled, crowned or cleaned with written helps given about where the vets with few teeth left, could have dental bridges made so they could chew food and nourish their bodies better. Offers were made of shelter, work, rehabilitation, reissuing military IDs, refitting prostheses. All these services often provided, since we are at war, by civilian docs, nurses, dentists, lawyers, experts of many kinds… as well as the military vets who brought the homeless in from the cold.

Two matters in particular remain on my mind…

1. That on the streets of Denver, though you see one homeless vet at a time on one corner or another, the ‘search party’ of vets to ‘bring home’ the homeless vets, consisted of only about 60 heartful men. The numbers of heartbroken vets they found and ministered to that day, was more than 900.

Nine-hundred-plus homeless, walking wounded vets. In our city alone. The work stands right before us, right within our reach

2. Many of the homeless vets are Purple Heart vets. The Purple Heart medal is for those wounded or killed in battle, and is awarded with this phrase: “Let it be known that he who wears the military order of the Purple Heart has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen.”

“Revered.”

No doubt, we still have …. ‘Miles to go before we sleep…’

_____________________
CODA: This bringing in from the cold, is called Veterans’ Stand Down, and is done each year. This is my DH’s 5th year participating, and will continue participating til he/we die, I think.

I was reminded this morning of how much small acts about ‘what stands right within your reach’ matter… when, also, Dorian DeWind, one of the other military vet cobloggers here at TMV (also veteran Shaun Mullen) broadcast an urgent email to us assistant editors, asking that someone please upload/link a certain pix Dorian had in mind in honor of Veteran’s Day. He couldn’t post pix from where he was. He could have let it go. But he took care of what was within his reach. I’m glad for that.

I’m/ we’re grateful on this day to anyone who does whatever is within his or her reach, including reading this piece, and maybe forwarding it to others who might be able to put it to good usefulness.

Most especially, my family and I and the other veterans at TMV and their families, all the TMV writers and families: THANK ALL veterans, and veteran’s families everywhere for their service to our country… service comes at no small cost, but often adds in ways large and small, to the benefit of millions of people, sight unseen….