an excerpt from: A Markerless Grave in Vacaville
By Cindy Sheehan
I am so tired of the Rovian, heartless, and ignorant smear machine attacking me and my family at every turn of my back.
The latest abomination in their scrutiny of my life is the fact that Casey has no "tombstone." As if it was anybody’s business but Casey’s family. I am sure every last person who has a problem with this has buried a child and they know what we are going through.
I am being smeared because I have a new car and I have "blown" through "$250,000.00" dollars of Casey’s insurance money. I am sure that they have ready access to my bank accounts, too. I know I am writing this to compassionate people who would rather focus on an administration who lies, tortures, kills innocent people using conventional and chemical weapons, spies on its citizens without due process, and is treacherous in outing a CIA operative for petty-high school like revenge thereby endangering her, her family, and her fellow CIA agents. If it wasn’t for these criminals my son wouldn’t need a tombstone...
I forgot this part:
For the first year after Casey was killed, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to place a TOMBstone on my son’s grave. I didn’t want one more marble proof that my son was dead. I couldn’t even call where he was buried a "cemetery," I had to call it "Casey’s Park." I placed fresh flowers in the cup every week and journaled there almost on a daily basis, and often laid on it and fell asleep and dreamed of my needlessly killed son. Have any of these people who claim that I am pissing on my son’s grave even visited him? Have they visited the grave of any soldier needlessly or senselessly killed in George’s war of choice for oil and profit? Have they sobbed uncontrollably for my first born who shouldn’t even need a gravestone? No, all they want to do is attack a mother who wants to prevent other people from having to bury their own child. They want to perpetuate a war that has already killed many thousands of our fellow human beings for absolutely nothing.
The $250,00 was what was in effect at the time of his death. Since then, Congress has authorized $400,000 as the maximum insurance payout, with anyone who received $250,000 since 8/10/2001 authorized to receive an additional $150,000 to make up the difference retroactively. And that's just the insurance. There is also the matter of the $100,000 Military Death Gratuity which she also received. That's $500,000 -- more than enough not to shaft the funeral director.