We have to do more because our veterans deserve more

Monday was a great day. I spent the day with my family, took advantage of two businesses offering free meals to veterans and did some shopping.

But for the friends and families of approximately 22 veterans, Monday was a dark day. If Monday was an average day on the veterans suicide front, then 22 vets took their own lives, and that number could be even higher.

Veterans are killing themselves at a rate twice that of the general population. (Click here for a more detail look at the numbers for 2012.)

We have to do more. For our veterans. For our country. For ourselves.

As friends we have to ask the hard questions. We have to see the warning signs and not ignore them. We have to put up with more bull crap from our friends than anyone has a right to expect us to.

A person who is ready to end their life is ready to end it alone. They've likely tunneled so deep inside themselves they see no other way out. They'll try to push everybody important in their lives out of it. We can't let them force us to walk away. We must stand beside them. Let them know that we care. We have to do more.

When veterans do ask for help, we owe them a system that isn't held together with red tape. More than 273 days. More than 10 percent of the files on record get lost or destroyed. Paperwork required to file for benefits was found in boxes ready to be shred in more than 40 locations during an inspection last year. It's no wonder some veterans walk away from the very services designed to help them than to continue to fill out paperwork after paperwork or to be transferred from one office to another in an endless loop. We have to do more.

Tuition assistance was suspended for a period of time the past year. More fears of benefit reduction rang through the shutdown negotiations. Freedom isn't free. It's paid for by the sweat, blood and tears of America's veterans. We owe them a political system where their benefits aren't treated like borrowed poker chips in a friend's garage poker game. They gambled with their lives that your freedom was worth protecting. We shouldn't ask them sacrifice their benefits to pick up any short comings in the federal budget. We have to do more.

For those of us who've battled with the daemons of war and have lived to talk about it, we must talk about it with our battle buddies. We need to let them know things do get better and that the hardest step on the road to recovery is often the first one: asking for help. We must make asking for help with injuries no one else can see feel as normal as asking for help with a leg broken in two. We must teach our leaders, doctors and family members to respond to such a cry for help with the same urgency as an injury they could see. We have to do more.

We can't think of veterans a couple of days a year. There are wounds that parades can't heal. We need to let them know we care every day of the year. We must hire veterans, a hard working group of people with the ability to learn almost any new skill with the proper or less amount of training. We must make our veterans feel like valued members of our society and give them the resources to live a complete life after their duty to our country has ended. For many veterans, their sacrifices to our country continue long after they take off their uniform for the final time.

We have to do more. If for no other reason than in the 65 minutes it took me to write this, at least one veteran took their own life. We must do more.