I don't really like to see her name in my inbox. She brings enough negative images with her petulant whining and her dysfunctional grief.  But like it or not, her 15 minutes of fame refuses to hit the end. so we are likely going to hear about her for a while.

In this case, I guess it is a good reason, that being that Snopes.com, which is one of the greatest urban legand debunkers, has noted she finally closed out a chapter of her life:  She put a tomb stone on Casey's grave.  the story from Snopes:

Grave Matter

Claim: Casey Sheehan's grave is unmarked with a standard headstone. Status:   Multiple:

Casey Sheehan's grave lacked a headstone for the first two years after his death:   True.

Casey Sheehan's grave is not now marked with a headstone:   False.

This is confirmed at the Vacaville Reporter, the local paper:

Memorial Day will be different this year at the Vacaville-Elmira Cemetery, where Casey Sheehan, a soldier from Vacaville, lies buried.

Until this week, more than two years after his death in Iraq, Casey's grave has been marked only by a small plaque. On Thursday, it received a headstone.

The elegant marble slab is thick and emblazoned with a cross and delicate thickets of trees on both sides.

"Our Casey," reads an inscription on the front. "Ever faithful, kind, and gentle, good son, beloved brother, brave soldier, dear friend, you loved your family and lived your life serving others to the end." Six icons grace the other side, representing a military insignia, the theater, Eagle Scouts, Van Halen, the World Wrestling Federation and Superman.

Also on the front are Casey's name and the dates of his life and death, which reveal an uncanny synchronicity. In addition to Memorial Day, Monday will also be Casey's birthday, the day on which he would have turned 27.

I have to admit, the stone as they have placed it does him a great tribute.  It, is likely one of the nicest tributes I can imagine.  The stone refelcts his family, his friends, his service and his heroism. The rear of it reflects his interests.

No anti war BS, just a tribute to the man he was.  Truly a case when rhetoric and ideology was placed aside for respect.

And I will take a moment to defend the family for the time it took to place the stone.  Not that he was not worthy, but i know many other families who waited a long time to do so.  Grief takes time sometimes.  I would rather they take time to do it right they do something hasty and disrespectful.

In this case, I think the time led to a beautiful tribute.

The article notes the controversy:

The absence of a headstone on Casey's grave became fodder for Sheehan's critics last year, who accused her of being negligent and disrespectful. Sheehan did not publicly respond for the first several months of such charges. But on April 10, she wrote a blog entry excoriating her critics and recounting the torturous experience of burying her son.

"I didn't want to put a tombstone on my son's grave," she wrote, capitalizing the letters of the word "tomb." "I didn't want one more marble proof that my son was dead."

Moments like that I feel compassion for her.  i cannot judge her too harshly.  How do I know I would react any better? 

For the first year after Casey died, wrote Sheehan in the entry, she referred to the place he was buried not as a cemetery, but as "Casey's Park." During that time she visited the cemetery nearly every day, she wrote, placing fresh flowers weekly on Casey's grave.

Moments like this, I am also reminded that she really needs, and I mean this sincerely, she desperately needs grief counseling.  The anti war left has taken her grief and amplified it for cause and ratings, and she is paying the price in her mental health.

Sheehan also said that her estranged husband Patrick had taken on the responsibility of handling Casey's gravesite.

With that, my cynical nature arises...and wonders if that is a big reason why the stone was so fitting a tribute.

On Friday, Sheehan answered questions about the headstone via e-mail from Australia, where she has spent the week speaking out against the country's support of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.

Sheehan said she had paid for the tombstone herself and was part of a family effort to put it up, even though its installation saddened her.

"It is important for the rest of Casey's family to have one," she wrote Friday. "I guess the pain of seeing it etched in marble that he is dead is another pain I will have to deal with."

That pain, said Sheehan, stems from her belief that Casey should still be alive.

"I still feel he was killed for lies," she wrote.

The headstone was very expensive, Sheehan wrote. She said that the government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death. But Sheehan said money is not the main issue.

No it isn't, considering the Government offered her a free headstone, which is available for all veterans.  Admittedly is plainer then what the family produced, but if money was the issue, she could have let the VA do its work.  My in-laws are buried beneath a stone supplied by the VA, as is a close friend in California.  They are solomn respectuful and by comparison, plain- even austere.

"It's about the lies that are still killing our children and innocent Iraqis," she wrote. "It's about unnecessary tombstones all over the world because of the Bush regime."

Thus dies my sympathy, again.  It just irks me I suppose that even in a moment where we are laying to rest criticism of her, she continues to blast away and make herself a larger target.  She wanted better then what the VA wanted to give, and paid for it herself, though she complains they should have.  She continues to make this an anti Bush issue. 

Her sons death means nithing to her but as a means to slam the president.

The new headstone on Casey's grave won't impact her relationship with her son, concluded Sheehan.

"Casey's shell lies in the grave in Vacaville," she wrote. "He is with me always and in the hearts of people all over the world who know his story and are working for peace."

If they knew the truth of what he did, when he did and why he did it, likely they would be inspiured by his heroism fighting and dying for a cause he believed in, not just having died for nothing.

They still do not understand.

But Joe Johnson of Rome GA does.  His son Justin was a friend of Casey Sheehan, and also died in Iraq the same week as Casey.  Did Joe hit the campaign/protest circuit?  Appear on Air America?  Do Crawford Texas diaries at HuffPo? 

No.

Here is what Joe did:

Remembering those who serve our country

 I went to Georgia a few months back and visited the Johnson family, whose son, Justin, was a friend of Casey Sheehan.

Casey and Justin died six days apart in Sadr City, Iraq. Justin's father, Joe, took the opposite route of Cindy Sheehan, the nation's most recognizable anti-war activist. Joe Johnson joined an Army unit and fought in Iraq. (emphasis added)

I formally met Joe during his short visit home from the war zone. The first thing he wanted to do, aside from hugging his wife, was visit Justin's grave.

Justin's body lies in a historical cemetery in Rome, Georgia, not far from a Confederate memorial. The Rome City Council had to approve Justin's burial, because the cemetery has few spaces remaining. Justin, 22, was the first person from Floyd County, Ga., to die in Iraq.

As I watched Joe visit his son's grave, I felt such overwhelming respect. Joe went to war to protect this country and to avenge his son's death. It was his way of mourning.

Now he's home, a veteran of the war in which his son served and died. I prayed every day that he would come home. His wife, Jan, barely hung on. She feared another visit from the Army men with official condolences.

Memorial Day means different things to all of us. Vacaville has suffered great loss, so residents here have deep feelings for our war dead. Our veterans deserve every prayer we can muster, every smile, every salute.

I was disgusted to hear that some heartless fool stole the veterans' trailer, which they use for a float in Vacaville's parade. The sheriff's office offered one of its trailers, so the veterans will have a float.

We are not a community that forgets its servicemen and women.

Sometimes it's easy to ignore the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of us want to forget. Except for our warriors and their families, we sacrifice little on a day-to-day basis. During World War II, all adults pitched in or felt the war in a personal way. I remember stories of locals who collected scrap steal for the military to recycle into war equipment.

One of the largest funerals locally during the WWII era was that of my Uncle Tony Perez. He died in the Battle of the Bulge. Solano County lost too many sons in that war.

War changes some families forever, such as the Sheehans and the Johnsons. They memorialize their sons every day while we watch "American Idol" and eat hotdogs. Yes, they go through the motions, but a dark spot clouds their hearts.

Back in Georgia, the state named an intersection for Justin Johnson, a small memorial to a beautiful man who loved our country and wanted to protect her after Sept. 11, 2001.

"It looks so neat going through there and seeing his name up there," Jan wrote to me in an e-mail. "It's hard to see it, too; twists my heart 'cause then I know it really is true that he is gone."

See the difference?  Read more on Joe here and here.

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