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Veterans Day

Dear Dad,

You lied about your age.. you were just 16...so you could enlist.

You were shot in head and left for dead alone in a ditch in a winters woods of France.

You prayed to the Blessed Mother for one year with that girl in NY. And somehow you survived and came home.

Her family said stay away.. hes a crazy Irish man who was shot in the head.

But she decided to listen to her heart instead of them.

I'm pretty glad about that...otherwise I'd be some old whisper in the wind instead of the word chaser and bellower I've become.

You were married for 66 years and would have been for another 66 if flesh was as strong as feeling.

Anyway...proud to be your son.

Hope your dna wins out over my hubris...i can feel it sometimes swirling way down deep in me.

Your grateful son

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