1337 The Grieving Mother
This woman hanging around Crawford, TX is in a lot of pain, and it will only get worse if she lets the anti-war protestors take over her dignity and loss. If you read through the various accounts, the Bush Administration has been very patient with her, but for some reason she will not be satisfied until she has convinced the President by personally talking to him, that he should wave a wand and stop this war. Her grief has made her crazy. I feel very sorry for her. But you know what? That won't bring her son back, and then she'll find something else.I watched my grandmother grieve for the last 20 years of her life after her son was killed in the China Burma India theater. She wanted answers, but never got them. And I'm so glad. Just two years ago we found out what happened to him. What a terrible, horrible waste of a fine young life caused by the incompetency and arrogance of his commanding officer. My grandmother's uncle was a teen-ager when he ran away and signed on to be a soldier in the final months of the Civil War, long before she was born. He died of dysentery and is buried in Tennessee. Grief? His family left his name out of the family Bible, and we didn't discover him until we started doing genealogy. Look down through history and find a war that doesn't have grieving parents or dissenters.
When my oldest son died over 40 years ago, I demanded answers from the hospital, the pathologist, a pastor, my friends and my family. (I didn't think to ask God because I wasn't a believer then.) I was not a nice person and I was really angry. If camping out at the summer White House would have given me answers, I probably would have tried it. There is no response in this world that heals that grief, you can't hug it away or talk it away or listen it away. Losing a son who volunteered to be a soldier in a time of war, to protect his country, who loved the Iraqi people and believed in the cause his mother doesn't like must make it all the more unbearable for her. I just wish she weren't dishonoring what he believed in by pursuing what she believes in.
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3 comments:
She gives us a great opportunity to be charitable. I've seen her photo, she's 48 but looks much older, totally destoyed. I think her son understands her actions.
She is such an example of how grief not handled in a positive manner but in a brooding one will destroy you. She is being shamelessly exploited by the antiwar media and Bush haters, and on the other side the war people point at ther and say "see the crazy woman, how many mothers have lost kids and not done THIS..." sickening it really is I pray for her often...
Nathan Bierma's Chicago Tribune column provides a proverb that may be appropriate:
"The South Asian language of Urdu has the proverb "oont kis karwat baithta hai," or "let's see which way the camel sits." It means, "wait and see," since in a sandstorm, the wind direction can be determined by seeing which way the camel turns to shield its face."
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