A Heroes Welcome

I have a cousin who served in Vietnam. He was nineteen when he first went, just a little older than my boys are now. I cannot imagine the nightmare he experience while he was there. I've heard so many horror stories, the heat,the incredibly dark nights, the mosquitoes, the shear terror of it all. I was all of fourteen when the war ended so I didn't really think too much about it back then, they said it was the first war we could watch on the nightly news but after a while I think we all just got used to it and didn't pay attention quite as much. This was the way it was, we had service men and women in probably the scariest place in the world but it just didn't seem real from our recliners and couches. All I knew was I had a cousin over there and I hoped he'd come back walking not in a pine box . All the soldiers wanted to get back too and dreamed of their families and friends at home. While they were doing this a movement was going on that shocked many when they did get their discharges or furlows. There were people, Americans, who threw stuff at them, spit on them and called them all sorts of horrible names. My cousin experienced this himself. It was not bad enough for a bunch of boys right out of high school to be shipped around the world to endure all sorts of things they would never be able to get out of their heads...they had to come home to a group of people who were loud if not large in number who despised them. What a pity. I wish I had been a little older, understood a little better, had planned a party when my cousin came home. I'm sure there was some sort of quiet celebration with the family, I think I remember going to my aunt's house to see him but I'm sure it was not what he deserved.
Well, better late than never I guess. Another cousin, our hero's sister, called me yesterday with a plan. We are going to throw him a party to celebrate the forty years he's been out of the military. He is somewhere around sixty I think but he has cancer. We don't know how much longer he's going to be with us so we thought a party to celebrate his life would be better than us all grieving his death. This way he gets to enjoy being talked about. He is a hero . He earned the Bronze Star twice and some other medals or honors that I've heard he told the army to put where there is never sunshine. After the way they brought them home in the cloak of secrecy to avoid the radicals who would treat them badly it's a wonder any Vietnam vets have a positive view. I've heard many are homeless, many have severe emotional problems, some have given up on life itself. But some, like my cousin have walked on, they have raised children and enjoyed grandchildren, they have kept their faith and opened up to family or friends about what happened to them while they were in the closest thing to Hell most of them have ever dreamed of.
On the Sunday before Labor Day we will come together as a family with pies, cakes, fried chicken and potato salad to let our hero from the war know we won't forget his service to our country and to us. I'll apologize that my regards are so late.