17 years... almost a lifetime

 Michael,

 17 years. It seems like such a long time, and it means I'm getting way too close to the point where I've lived more of my life without you than with you. In some ways, it seems like that will mark 2 different lifetimes--the one I lived with you and the one I've lived since you. I still miss you all the time. Sometimes, the missing you part is normal. It's just a little thought that I would love to be able to tell you something or ask your advice. Other times, it's painful enough that it takes my breath away.

I wish you were here to know all your nieces and nephews--there are a lot of them now. I would love to see that crooked grin of yours while you pestered them like you always did me. I imagine you would make sure they all knew how to throw a punch, too. I would love to hear your take on all the chaotic stories that come out of my life on the farm. I have a feeling you would laugh as much as Pop does. The two of you have always been good at making me see disasters in a different light.

I really wish I could talk with you about all the craziness in the world right now. I have to be honest, there are times when I'm glad you aren't here to face it. I never imagined I would live in an America where rights and freedoms were taken away. I especially never thought I would see the day when the freedom you died to defend was given away freely by so many people. You were carried in a coffin that was draped with a flag that millions of people are now saying is a disgrace, and it breaks my heart. The people who are giving away their freedoms so quickly seem to have forgotten the high price that was paid for those freedoms.

 

"Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

That question is one I'm asking myself a lot lately. Instead of bravery, the government and media are pushing fear. Instead of freedom, we're being told to give up our rights in the name of safety. Never mind the fact that we aren't in nearly as much danger as they are saying... but then again, they aren't too concerned with facts any more. Actual data is suppressed as "disinformation" and we're told to just believe what we're told. We're living in a society where any voice of opposition is instantly silenced. We're expected to fall in line with the "groupthink" that is being pushed on us and ignore the hypocrisy of those doing the pushing. Division is all that matters. After all, you can only have a ruling elite in power if you create an "us versus them" mentality. That's the strategy that has been used pretty much since the dawn of time.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
~George Orwell's 1984

 Sometimes, I'm glad you aren't here to see what's happening. Other times, I wish you were here so I could get strength from standing beside you. Because despite all the unanswered questions about what your life would have been like these past 17 years, I have no doubts about where you would stand now. You would stand on the side of freedom. You would stand, like you always did, beside those whose freedoms were being taken away. You would stand for truth and the rights of the individual. You would stand against the oppressor, because that is what you always did. You would stand to defend our God-given rights because you died trying to ensure those rights for the people of Iraq.

I miss you. I hope I make you proud.