Memorial Day


Sorry for not posting today. Yes, I enjoyed the holiday, and, probably like a lot of folks, took the time to relax a bit and take care of chores.

Still, this article sticks out for me, among all the other things I've read or come across:

Jacob Hobbs, 10, did not mince words about the death of his father.

"He was in a Humvee, driving at night on patrol, and a homemade bomb blew up on him so bad it killed his brain," Jacob said of his father, Staff Sgt. Brian Hobbs, 31, of the Army. "But he wasn't scratched up that much. And that's how he died."

Sitting across from Jacob in a circle at a grief camp over Memorial Day weekend, Taylor Downing, a 10-year-old with wavy red hair and a mouthful of braces, offered up her own detailed description. "My dad died four days after my birthday, on Oct. 28, 2004," Taylor said quietly of Specialist Stephen Paul Downing II. "He got shot by a sniper. It came in through here," she added, pointing to the front of her head, "and went out there," shifting her finger to the back of her head...

An estimated 1,600 children have lost a parent, almost all of them fathers, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, nearly 150 of these children gathered at a hotel here in this Washington suburb for a yearly grief camp run by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a nonprofit group founded in 1994 that helps military families and friends cope with death and talk about their loss...

Burying a parent is never easy for a child, but losing a father in a violent way, in a far-off war, is fraught with a complexity all its own.

The children receive hugs from strangers who thank them for their father's courage; they fight to hold back tears in front of whole communities gathered to commemorate their fathers; they sometimes cringe when they hear loud noises, fret over knocks at the door and appear well-versed in the treachery of bombs.

And often the children say goodbye not just to their fathers but to their schools and homes, since families who live on a military base must move into the civilian world after a service member dies...

Many of these children are old enough to remember their fathers, but now the images are slipping away in fragments.

One memory few will ever forget is the moment they learned that their fathers would not come home. Paul R. Syverson IV, a 10-year-old with a blond crew cut and his father's face, saw a soldier at the door. "My mom saw him and started crying," said Paul, trying hard to stifle tears as he recounted how he was sent next door to play.

His father, Maj. Paul R. Syverson III, 32, a Green Beret, had been killed by a mortar round inside Camp Balad, Iraq — or as Paul put it, "He was eating breakfast, and he was shot by Iraqis."

Later, "I cried," he said. "I played with my soldiers. And then I went to the basement because my dad was a collector of 'Star Wars' stuff. I took those out, and I played with them."

Brooke Nyren, 9, whose father, Staff Sgt. Nathaniel J. Nyren, died in a vehicle accident in Iraq on Dec. 28, 2004, told her story in a writing assignment at the camp. When two Army men showed up at the door, "I was really scared," Brooke wrote. "The two Army men asked my mom, please can you put your daughter in a different room. So I went in my room. The only thing I was doing was praying."

"My hart was broken," she wrote.

The children's mothers say the deaths have had expected repercussions, like plummeting grades and mood swings. But they have also seen unexpected reactions. Madison Swisher, 8, who sleeps in her father's T-shirt, is afraid of loud noises; her dad died in Iraq from an improvised bomb. She and her younger brother talk a lot about bombs in general. They call the Iraqis the "bad guys" and are afraid the bad guys will arrive any minute.

Several mothers said they worried that their children's hero worship, a healthy balm in the beginning, could turn problematic if they tried to follow in their fathers' footsteps.

Teenagers, in particular, have trouble adjusting. Scott Rentschler, 14, was living on a military base in Germany when his father, Staff Sgt. George Rentschler, was killed in Iraq in 2004 by a rocket-propelled grenade. His life, Scott said, "is a roller coaster." Scott's grandmother, Lillian Rentschler, said that moving off a military base was difficult for him, and that society and schools make few allowances for children in their second year of grief.

"People think he should be all fixed up," Ms. Rentschler said.

The outpouring that families receive after a death is mostly comforting to them. But in time, it can verge on stifling, some parents said. Jenny Hobbs, 32, Jacob's mother, said that in their hometown, Mesa, Ariz., her three children were "embraced as heroes. It was cool to know them."

But there was a downside, Ms. Hobbs said, and ultimately she moved the family to Ohio. "The death is in the public eye," she said. "It is hard to let go. The war is still going on, and you are reminded of it. One reason I had to move is that it was hard to be normal."

Ms. Hobbs continued: "He was no longer ours and human. We needed him to be ours."

Parents and mentors say they try to help the children stay connected to their fathers and grieve in intimate ways, far from the public eye. They post photographs all over the house, make teddy bears out of their dads' shirts and encourage them to write letters.

Eddie Murphy, 10, whose father, Maj. Edward Murphy, 36, died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in April 2005, did just that one day at grief camp. "Summer is coming up," he wrote to his father. "It won't be the same without you. You won't believe it but I'm in Washington."

He signed off: "I love you. Hi to Heaven."

I've blogged before about this, so for those who've seen this before, another quick apology, but reading about kids losing parents in war really eats away at me. You see, I was very lucky: my own dad came home.

He wasn't in near the kind of danger U.S soldiers face on the ground in Afghanistan or Iraq, but he was a career officer in the United States Navy (Lt. Commander/Aviator), and served a seven month stint at Yankee Station in 1970. To a five year old, his absence was keenly felt, and it seemed like he was gone for a long, long time. You can't imagine the joy we kids felt--and I'll bet it was doubly so for my mom--when he got back.

It was awful enough when he unfortunately passed away in 2004, and I'm not exactly a kid anymore.

Comparing and contrasting the genuine pain these children will live with for the rest of their lives with the political games/lies of the people who pushed for war in Iraq...if there is a god, I sincerely hope said god damns the latter. All of them. Literally. For eternity.