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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
The word came months ago. At first, it was the type of rumor only mothers seem capable of. It’s the under-the-breath whisper she wasn’t supposed to share. But she couldn’t contain herself. As it turns out, my mother and I have something in common. I couldn’t either.
For me, it was necessary to repeat it. The simple act of letting the words leave my mouth assisted my brain in comprehending the words.
My brother is going to Iraq. He’s been to war before. The difference is that now he has a daughter. As of Memorial Day weekend, he has a wife. The potential for loss is great, but we bite our tongues.
Dark realities of war are cast into the realm of the sacred unsaid. But it gets harder to gloss over the nightly news when the war swings close in ways you don’t anticipate.
The war has come home to me this year. A grade-school friend of mine recovers at Walter Reed in Washington after losing his leg in an explosion in Iraq. February was the 40-year anniversary of the Tet Offensive that left bullets in my father’s neck.
Soldiers survive war in many different ways, but for military families, the battle begins even before their loved ones hit the ground. My battle began before I even knew for certain that my brother was going to Iraq.
My battle began when I considered the potential of my generation being flushed down the proverbial toilet for a war that can only end with a chaotic Middle East and a shameful march home. I consider the men and women who could have been teachers, economists, mothers and presidents but who are now dead.
I consider what it could feel like to lose a man such as a brother, and it transcends the possible labels that come from it. I could be called liberal. But it’s becoming a word that I fear less and less.
This is personal. I can find no shelter in political extremism. I can find no shelter in the former American ideal of superiority so many Americans still cling to in hopes of the return of that former glory.
When my brother sat down with us at a brat and burger shop in Aurora to give us the news officially, I was quiet. When later he pulled up a Google map of where he would be, I made the frog in my throat be still.
That night on the ride home when it was just me and my fiance, I cried, and it took me back to a moment that replays in my mind more frequently these days. Late summer, driving away from Stapleton Airport with my parents. It was months before the first Gulf War.
I don’t remember what my brother looked like on that day. I don’t remember my own emotions. But as we pulled out into the road, I absorbed the gravity of the moment through my father. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry.
I’ve changed my mind about being Republican. At one time, I was an alternate delegate at the state convention. Back when war was taken as lightly as the lives taken by the war. My conscience tells me no.
I thought of that moment when I registered to vote this year. It can fix very little, but perhaps in the future it will mean that others won’t be sent to a war that is unjustified.
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