The Importance of Truth

Tomas Young dishes in a Political TV ad

My friend Tomas Young is a paraplegic Iraq vet. He says that he's lucky that he got his bullet early. The Iraq vets who were really injured were the ones who saw lots of action. Often times they are under fire and have only women and children in their field of view. Fear takes over and they "drop them". "It's better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6" they say. I write about this in this blog because the road to the heart for these men is blocked by a societal norm of stoicism for soldiers. It's reasonable for everybody who witnesses such extensive senseless bloodshed will have PTSD -the doctors, the soldiers, the Iraqi families who are literally in the crossfire. The numbers are bigger than we know.

The big obstacle is that these men are told to suck it up and shut up. They are discouraged from healing because they can not define love after loss if the loss is ignored.  They are lost to themselves and ultimately to us.  When we tell our vets to suck it up or to be content because that's what they signed up for, we are shortchanging the wisdom that can come from such loss. There's growth for the family and the nation in this discussion by healing where the wounds actually are. The ultimate aim of such healing is to be present in this world with our loved ones while they are living. Instead our vets are either medicated into oblivion or left to self medicate through alcohol or other drugs. The final cost of the war is a big divorce. Divorce from the wife, from the soldier's own feelings and from society. When are we going to acknowledge our loss and start the honest discussion of healing? When is our government, the VA and the media going to step up to the plate? When are we going to say enough is enough?

Tomas with the beard and Papa Phil

Some clues out of this:

Tomas's Story is a movie and a book
Ultimately the road back to growing is found in forgiveness.


UPDATE 2019: Tomas campaigned the best he could for peace but ultimately the wounds from battle caught up with him and he died in 2014.  I don't know if he died naturally or with the aid of palliative care.  A year before he died he penned a letter to the Vice president and president.  That may be the biggest part of his legacy.

Tomas on the way to Robert Byrd's Funeral with wife Claudia Cuellar