Yesterday we celebrated my sister’s birthday and a friend’s birthday with a big family BBQ. As I looked around I realized how absolutely blessed I am that my family is present with me. My two brothers, who despite multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, are home. My husband who was called up three times for duty in Iraq miraculously never had to go, due to what I consider answers to my prayers.
When you have a loved one in a war zone, you don’t focus on ethics or morality of war. You cannot. All you know is that you have a loved one in danger and your heart is sick.
When my brother Jake went in on his first tour into Iraq, NBC had an embedded reporter with his unit so that every night on the news hour his family could watch him get shot at. It literally made me sick to my stomach. This wasn’t drama. This was real and real people would die; both Americans AND Iraqis. When my brother John came home he had a video of what went down in the Battle of Fallujah. It was unedited, real deal, this is not Hollywood. And it made me deeply sad. I saw both Iraqis and Americans dying on the streets and all I could do was pray for their families as they grieved their losses.
So last night, as we all gathered around and sang, I thought of the men in my both brother’s units who did not get to come home and celebrate ever again. I thought about Medic Fralish, who will always be memorialized on my brother’s shoulder in the form of a huge tattoo. Fralish worked hard and succeeded in a saving a little Afghani girl’s life. I thought about PFC Bertalino. I thought about my brother’s drill instructor at the age of 26 who will never get to see his daughter grow up.
It is terrible that it is so easy for our country to send people to their deaths with no sacrifice from us required. The least we can do is bow our heads and pray for the dead today. And pray for our elected officials to use wisdom so that more people do not have to mourn.
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