The report was stamped as posted twenty minutes ago. The body of one of the three kidnapped soldiers in Iraq had been found afloat in the Euphrates river.
Reading it, I was struck with a sadness I have not felt up to now in this war.
I have had a friend leave for Iraq; miraculously, he came back. Our friendship changed dramatically with his leaving: he grew insular, retreating to the people he knew and loved before his too-recent move to Montana was cut so abruptly short by his being called up. He came back, not terribly altered, but more closed than when he had left. Still, he came back.
This child's family has news of his passing, news of his death that will shatter their lives and be a story through the generations. But they will not have their son back. He is not returning home, anymore than the hope that so many held for the soldiers' safe return can come home now. We are all lessened by this loss.
More than once, I heard the tale as I was growing up of a cousin I would never know. He went off to another war. He was shot, he was killed, I'll not tell the details.
He was ever a legend, and a ghost of sadness. Whenever his tale was told, the room grew cold, and silent. The women weeped, and the men departed to linger in the halls, thrown off balance by this son they could not hold.
This sadness returned to me, reading of our soldier's loss. It seems inevitable now that another report will come, and another. I cringe thinking of the horror,the fear, these young men must have suffered. I pray they died quickly, they died well.
This can be no consolation to the family who has lost their child. Like my aunt, they will go on, burdened with his loss.
I pray only that soon, very soon, the madness ends.
~Namaste
