War is Hell

I work with injured Marines on almost a daily basis. Some of these guys are injured so badly that they will never have a reasonable quality of life and will either die from their injuries within the next few months or be in a persistent vegetative state. No matter how healthy you are, or how advanced medicine is today, when you have an I.E.D. explode underneath you and you have your brains reorganized by shrapnel, you will not have a reasonable life after that. The question that goes around in my head is what is best for the family? I often think to myself if it were my time to go, would it be best that I came home in a pine box and with a flag for my family, or come back in a horrific, barely alive state and string my family along through my long painful demise? Coming back in a box leads to a funeral, and them moving on to the healing process. Coming back in a unsalvageable traumatically injured state drags the family though a long painful ordeal that at its end still leads to a funeral before the healing process can begin. I don't know...I think I might choose the box if I had a choice.