Excerpt: For What It's Worth

I feel like war as been the primary focus of my entire life. World war 2 when my grandfather died. The Korean War when my father died. The Vietnam War when my brother died. The Gulf War when my husband died. And now. Iraq. I guess it’s no coincidence that the Vietnam Memorial Wall is making a stop in my town the same day as I got notice that my youngest son has died in Iraq. I am as angry as I am grieved. I didn’t want him to go to Iraq. I tried desperately to talk him out of enlisting, just as I did when my husband and my brother enlisted. War never solves anything. No one ever wins a war. I hate football for the same mindset it has… defense and offense… they are offending someone and somewhere. Sudden death. Too much death.

So I stand here in front of this shiny granite wall, with all the names of people who died.. For what? Trying to cry for my brother, for my husband and now for my son, and the tears just don’t come. I’m too afraid that if they do come, they will never stop again.

I try to justify what these wars have accomplished over time, to help my losses feel like they were helpful, in some way. I think about the people I know… how the world as changed.

I wipe the tears from my eyes and wrap my arms close to my body, imagining that it’s my son, my husband, my father, all hugging me back. I walk slowly back home, not sure what to do with myself. This all should be familiar.

The black car drove up to my house, and a nice looking young man in a pressed and polished military uniform nervously got out of the car and walk up to my door. I watched him do this; unable to move and yet feeling very sorry for the task in front him. The car is the dead giveaway… yes, pun intended. When that car stopped in front of your house, you knew that someone in your family had just died at war.

The young man knocked on the door, and I slowly opened it. He looked at me sadly, his hat in his hand, shaking. He told me his name, but I don’t remember it.

“I’m sorry”, he said, and then I don’t remember what he said after that, other than the words that my son was dead. It’s the same words I heard when the Casualty Officer’s arrived to deliver the news of my husband’s death. The same words I remember my mother hearing with the death of my brother, and I can imagine the ones she heard when my father died too.