 Saturday, on Memorial Day weekend, we decided that we weren't going to go out of town. The boys and I, they were three and five. We thought we'd just relax for the weekend. So my youngest son, Billy, and I had laid down for a nap and my other son, JJ, who was five, was playing in his bedroom and the doorbell rang. I wore the pin for my husband, Dan. He was killed May 29, 2004 in Afghanistan. He was a special forces soldier. My oldest son actually answered the door. He saw the lieutenant colonel in his uniform and he immediately ran and got me from my bedroom and said, mommy, there's somebody here to see you. And I got out of bed and I opened the door and I saw a lieutenant colonel from my husband's unit in his uniform and I immediately knew. The only thing I thought of immediately was to find out if my son was okay. And he said, I know why he's here, my daddy's dead. He had recently gone on a mission to chase some of the Taliban out of a nearby city and on the way back, his vehicle ran over an IED, just not having somebody around. The person who's supposed to teach their sons how to catch a ball, how to get dressed, how to go fishing, how to drive a car, it's all those milestones that you imagine that a father would be doing with his sons have completely changed. I leave my pin on my uniform. I'm active duty military and so my pin stays on my uniform so that I don't forget that when I'm in uniform that it's a part of me. I wear it to allow others to see that there are people who are in active duty that have lost a loved one in this war and that we're not just people who are a mother or a father but there are people among their ranks that still have sacrificed as well. I think it's important for people to realize that there's a life behind that pin. There's a life that was lost behind that pin and that pin is essentially a physical representation of the freedom that America has and will have. I can go out, I can get a job, I can not work, I can go to the grocery store, I can buy whatever car I want, I have the right to say whatever I want, I have the right to own a weapon if I want and all of those are defended by the person that I lost and that's whatever the ghost are in.