Veterans Day Parade

This week, my project has really gotten started and I am so excited to see where all it leads me.  One thing that I will be doing is participating in the 2012 Veterans Day Parade in Birmingham, Alabama on November 12. Comfort Care Hospice, myself included, will be pinning Veterans. This way, we get to raise community awareness about Veterans and hospice while thanking them for their service. Which in a lot of cases, may have never been done before. I could not imagine going off to war and returning home and never hearing "thank you for your service". A lot of the older Veterans did not have a choice because they were drafted or they felt as if it was their duty to serve our country, something they had to do. In my case, it was a choice for me to join the Navy and I never had to set foot in enemy territory. So when I hear "thank you for your service", I think it was no big deal to me. But it was a big deal, I was away from my family and friends and often times on a ship in the middle of nowhere for weeks and months at a time. Any service no matter how big or how small is a sacrifice, and one that in most cases did not have to be made.

I will also be working on a project to raise community awareness about hospice and the End-of-Life needs of Veterans. During that process, I will be hanging up posters at local VFW (Veterans of Foreign War) facilities and military reserve bases to help recruit Veterans as volunteers. It is beneficial to these dying Veterans to have someone to talk to that has had some similar life experience, someone that they can relate to. If you can build that trust with them, they may often times talk to you about things that they may not have ever talked about with anyone else. In one's last days, that may be something extremely important, a way feel like they are understood.

Here are a few facts about Veterans that you may not have known; the numbers were shocking to me also as I read them (wehonorveterans.org).

·         26 million Veterans are alive today

·         1,800 Veterans die daily, so 1 out of 4 dying Americans are Veterans

·         96% of Veterans die in the community, many are alone

I hope that you are as excited as I am and hanging on the edge of your seat to see what I have to post next week! Until then, feel free to leave me any comments on any ideas you may have to better my project.