ONE YEAR LATER: Closing the Book, Questions Unanswered

A year has passed since  Brian was killed.    How is that possible?  Remembering that day, hearing the news, the anguish is still fresh.  Yet so much has happened.  Life has indeed gone on.

His unit is safely home from Afghanistan now.  That changed things emotionally for me.  Mixed with the deep relief for them was a fear that his sacrifice would be less recognized now that no one is there who actually served with him and with so little progress in Afghanistan.  I was painfully aware on Memorial Day that, for most Americans, it is a day off from work, a day to find bargains in the stores, not a day to REMEMBER all who died in service to their country.

Mother’s Day was hard.  Not only had my own Mom recently died, but I ached for Mary experiencing her first Mother’s Day without Brian.  I thought of all the mothers for whom Mother’s Day will simply be a reminder of loss.

Father’s Day was emotionally even harder than Mother’s Day.  That was the last time Brian spoke to his father.  They enjoyed each other’s company so much that he forgot to actually say “Happy Father’s Day” and had to call back to laughingly add it.

Living near Washington, DC, as I do, I was hit extra hard by the dreadful news that management of Arlington National Cemetery has not served our military dead with competence and diligence.  I can – mostly – forgive civilians for their oblivion to the sacrifices made on their behalf.  I cannot forgive military or government officials who order those sacrifices and then dishonor them.

When the whole General McChrystal debacle hit the news, I felt a personal connection because his wife had called after my letter was published in the Washington Post.  And obviously the General’s opinions matter.  Not having actually seen the Rolling Stone article, and fully aware of how reporting selected bits from a month of observations and conversations can distort the full picture, I am still deeply dismayed to hear thatGeneral McCrystal  may be questioning the direction and prosecution of this war that killed Brian.  The level of fatigue and personal depletion suggested by his colossal error in judgment in voicing those doubts in front of a reporter somewhat  modulates my anger at him for the potential damage to troop morale and safety of his comments and removal.

I’ve seen Afghanistan described as “ten minutes out of the Stone Age.”  Are we doing any good there?  Can we make a difference?  It feels such a betrayal to even wonder…   Then Nate Bethea posted some thoughts on Facebook about Memorial Day.  Nate  served with Brian  and took many of the non-professional Afghanistan/military photos I’ve used in this blog.   (Sean Maples was the other.  Thank you, both.),

In his commentary, Nate said in part:

What I am going to say next may seem shocking, and I want to say that I mean it with all respect. I know that we fought for small victories in Afghanistan, and that friends bled for them. There was meaning. I just have to say this:

More terrifying than the pain of dying in war is the fear of dying in war for nothing. Everyone who wears a uniform has imagined what might happen to them in that fatal event. We want it to mean something, and surely it will later on, we think. The men in films I described above, the deaths that seemed to be rendered trivial, they have history on their side. Surely there is value in dying during the liberation of Europe. And surely we can’t tell a heroic epic of a story if the tragedy of every death is placed at center stage. My fallen friends died doing their jobs, doing them well, making the best of the situation, trying to help. But who knows how this story will end? Something needs to be advanced in our world to cost so much. Either that or we need to be done with this and never do this kind of thing ever again. (emphasis mine)

AMEN, Nate.  Amen.

Feeling something similar about this blog, I am bringing it to a close.  Few have read it.  I’m not making a difference doing it.  So, this will be my last post here.  I need to find a different way to honor Brian, even though stopping feels sadly like letting him go.

God bless all our troops.

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