Thursday, September 30, 2010

If Tomorrow Never Comes

Dying Marine's Final Wish Granted

Five years ago, the 46-year-old former Marine was diagnosed with brain tumors."I was doing fine until I started having seizures and they did some tests and took some biopsies and then they found out I had tumors," Martinez said of his initial diagnosis.

Aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments initially seemed to work. Martinez went into remission and was back on the road to a normal life.In January he started having seizures again His doctors did more tests and discovered the cancer had returned and this time it was terminal. He was placed in the care of hospice nurses from Harbour Hospice of Bexar County.

Martinez faces each new day knowing it could be his last, but he isn't focused on dying."I'm just living one day at a time that's all I can do," Martinez said.Last week Martinez was asked by his case manager, Barbara Kirk, if he had any final wishes. He had two.The first was to be reunited with his kids that he hadn't seen since his divorce six years ago.

Kirk and the other nurses at Harbour Hospice contacted the children and they came to visit their father."The second (wish) was just to go out to the mountains again and have one last time under the stars and a campfire and get along with nature once again," Martinez said recalling his wish.

Kirk jumped into action. She's not in the business of fulfilling final wishes but said there was just something about Martinez that made her want to help him. She felt a connection to him because of his service to his country. She is also a veteran, having served in the Air Force and she has two kids currently serving in the military."

He's just been a joy to take care of, he has the sweetest spirit and has just an incredible outlook on life and this is his deck of cards and he has to play them," Kirk said.Within a few days of making calls to her network of friends around the country,

Kirk said she managed to pull together an all expenses paid trip to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. She said she even managed to find a group of active duty Marines from North Carolina to spend the day with Martinez."Their mission is their falling brother, and they are taking him to a stream and parking him on the bank there and he's going fishing," Kirk said.

Martinez said he is most looking forward to that fishing trip because he will get to spend time with some younger Marines. He wants to thank them for their service and let them know that he'd be standing along side them on the front lines if he was healthy enough."If they would ask me right now I would jump on that truck, and go again," Martinez said. "I would not hesitate a minute."

The trip to Tennessee is planned for the first weekend in October. Martinez said he is doing all he can to hang on that long."I can't wait to get up there and have a good time," Martinez said.

Tomorrow morning before daylight, I will be saddling up my bike for a four hour ride to Knoxville Tennessee. I will be meeting up with a fellow Patriot Guard rider north of Atlanta for the journey. We will be making the trip together. We and a number of other Patriot Guard riders from around the south are answering the call to meet the plane of this Marine as he arrives for his last wish weekend in the Great Smokey Mountains.

He doesn't know that we are coming. He doesn't know that we will be there to meet his plane. He doesn't know that we will be giving him a full military honors escort from the airport to his weekend accommodations and his last wish to spend time doing something that he loves.

He doesn't know that there will be a number of active duty Marines coming in from bases in North Carolina to come help him live his dream and be there for him while he enjoys one of his last pleasures of life.

Many people are coming forward to make this happen. Everything has been donated, down to the last detail. Even his food which will have to be brought in and cooked for him has been donated by a former Marine who owns a local restaurant.

Here is a LINK to a small video tribute to a big man. A man now reduced physically by a devastating disease, but never reduced in spirit.

I am looking forward to meeting this hero. I am looking forward to the opportunity to meet this giant of a man and hopefully bring a smile to his face tomorrow.

Semper Fi Marine.... many of your brothers are coming and will be there for you as you make this final walk.

2 comments:

XtnYoda said...: I'll be praying for you all.

Semper Fi!; September 30, 2010 at 10:34:00 PM EST
XtnYoda said...: Been remembering you all today.

Semper Fi.; October 1, 2010 at 4:48:00 PM EST

Prime's Worm hole

This is a place for me to muse about the issues that affect our world. My world and my country and my life in particular. I can say what I want to here and those who may stumble across my musings, are welcome to comment,or not. America is under siege. Everything this nation has ever represented, is now being torn asunder and crushed by the onslaught of egalitarian socialism. All morals and social values have been devolved into the belief that systemic racism, is the only underlying cause or reason for any societal ills in America. And that representation, is nothing but a Trojan Horse argument. A means of getting the egalitarian camel's nose into the tent. And now that it has been inserted? There is mayhem and anarchy and burning and looting all across America. And the only questions that remains to be asked and answered? Are these. When is enough enough and when will the American people call full stop and take the law into their own hands, to repel this socialist based attack on the Constitution and our personal freedoms.

Thinking

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- just to loosen up and be a part of the crowd.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone -- "to relax", I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true.
Thinking became more and more important to me and finally I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver.

"You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make that much money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled
I headed for the library, in the mood for some John Locke. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.

They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Emerson, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.

This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I took the final step...I joined the Democratic Party

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If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

Captain Michael O'Donnell was lost in Cambodia on March 24 1970, while flying a UH1 rescue helicopter, trying to rescue an eight man LRRP team under attack in Cambodia. He was listed as MIA along with the eight he had attempted to rescue after his UH1 Huey was shot down by enemy fire. The official military report listed the eight as shot down 'non survivable' and 'non recoverable.'

Michael O'Donnell was submitted for the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day. He was awarded the Distinguished flying cross, the Bronze Star, The Air Medal and The Purple Heart and he was promoted to the rank of Major (posthumously).

In 1978 he was officially listed as KIA by the Department of Defense.

A little about the philosophy of the author

The Borg Conspiracy is one man's purely pedestrian thoughts, independent musings and frequently cheeky commentaries...Mixed with an abundance of patriotism, love of God, and love of country.

My thoughts?

In my opinion........in another generation, all that will remain of our once great republic, may be little more than what is left to weather the passage of time in the form of a few obscure and forgotten monuments to the great American experiment.

If America should fail....let it be written as her epitaph.....died by her own hand. The greatest experiment in freedom ever undertaken, lost in the end to the pursuit of the illusion that egalitarian tolerance was more valuable than individual freedom.

Let us be warned.
Franklin, Payne, Jefferson. They all knew the consequences of the lack of vigilance and they tried to warn us. They gave us a document as our guide post. We were to guard it and revere it and use it to guide and govern our future and our posterity.

No one listened.

Prime's Worm Hole

Thursday, September 30, 2010

If Tomorrow Never Comes

Dying Marine's Final Wish Granted

2 comments:

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