THANKFUL FRIDAY

At the end of today, people will head out of the office and into a long weekend of BBQs and maybe even a little get-away. They will celebrate the beginning of summer which is marked by Memorial Day. Everything summer opens up Memorial Day weekend. School’s out for summer. Except here. We had too many snow days this year. Michael’s last day of school is the 29th. The Cabbage’s last day of middle school is a half day on a Monday, June 2. They are so mad and have spent weeks complaining about having to go in for half a day on a Monday on the first day of summer. They’ve been petitioning an out, but their mom thinks they shouldn’t miss their last day of middle school. I am Switzerland on the subject, but honestly, the Cabbage has been over middle school since December. They’re ready to move on.

We have plans for attending a BBQ on Sunday with Jenn and Wade and some other friends. We’ll do the typical Memorial Day stuff even though Memorial Day has not been typical for me or my family in a really long time. This August will mark twenty years without my nephew, J. For those of you knew to my blog, we lost J to a car bomb in Iraq, August 1st 2005. My family is a small one and J was more little brother then nephew thanks to our four year age gap. Despite having a wife and two little boys (who are now grown adults), he did what a number of young people did after the attacks of Sept 11. He joined the Marine reserves as a way to serve and honor his country. We were all a bit delusional in thinking that because he was part of the reserves and had a young family, the government wouldn’t send him to Afghanistan. And they didn’t. They sent him to Iraq and two weeks before he was supposed to come home, his unit was hit with a car bomb. J came home to us in pieces and this broke my tiny family.

My tiny broken family has changed quite a bit in the last twenty years. J’s young boys are now grown men with wives. His young wife remarried and has two more boys, who I guess are not so much boys anymore as they are young teenage men. My tiny family grew a little bit with the addition of these people but then shrunk a bit with the loss of Chris and Dad. We’ve all moved forward. I no longer visibly cringe when someone thanks me for my sacrifice. It has taken me twenty years to understand that what I really sacrificed was naivety and innocence. I did not willing offer up my nephew to be a sacrificial lamb for this country. Instead, I sacrificed the idea that such tragedy could ever happen to my family. I sacrificed a belief that my country would ever allow such tragedy to happen to any family.

Twenty years later and I still don’t understand how J’s presence in Iraq helped this country.

My so called sacrifice shapes my vote, as I meticulously research candidates and their stance on veteran affairs and support of military families. It is one of the many reasons I did not vote for Josh Hawley (MO. Rep). He voted against supporting expanded health care for our veterans. The DOGE, set up by Trump, cut thousands of jobs for the Department of Veteran Affairs, a department that was already understaffed and implemented a hiring freeze. Veterans will now have longer wait times for health care, disability claims, burial and funeral expenses and the Veteran’s Crisis Line. As a citizen, it’s not like I didn’t care about these issues before this country wrongfully sent J to Iraq. It just made me care more and because of that, Memorial Day is more than BBQs and sales events. It’s about remembering those who died in service for this country, one that doesn’t truly support them.

I am grateful to those who support our military with more than words and accolades. I am grateful for those who still choose to serve in spite of the lack of support they will receive from this administration. I am grateful J turned out to be the kind of person who believed in doing good deeds and a man of integrity. I am grateful to the young ROTC group who decorated J’s grave site this morning by raising the American flag, something the group does every year. I am grateful to spend some time with friends this weekend and I’m grateful for the start of summer.

NUMBNESS

Planes

5 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Planes"

I didn't stand. I was high and a little tipsy and not really sure if I had heard the speaker right. Earlier in the evening I had used the quarter teaspoon to scoop out some pot-laced honey. I am still guessing at dosage for this little jar that was gifted to me by a friend. There is no label. No dosage recommendations. The whole jar is 250 mgs. The first time I ate some, I ate too much and had one of those panic moments where I thought I was overdosing on marijuana. Which is not a thing. This time I got the dosage just about right. By the time we were settled in on Terry's blanket in front of Union Station, I was pleasantly numb. By the time the Memorial Program got to the memorial part, I was one gin and tonic and two glasses of wine in and buzzy.

So whatever the man on stage said was unclear. It was only when I saw some people standing that it started to sink in. These are people who had someone who died while in service to this country. Then it registered somewhere deep inside my brain. I am a person who had someone who died while in service to this country. I reached for the nearest body, which happened to be Luke. Michael was somewhere standing in a line for the bathroom. I grabbed ahold of Luke just in time for them to start the gun salute. Luke was drunk enough to not really know what was happening other than we were just being lovey dovey. That's normal enough for us. I clung to him as I felt each fucking bullet and didn't let go until after the last note played from the trumpet in Taps. I let go and then settled down into my guilt. I was Peter waiting for the rooster to crow. 

The kind of attention that comes from losing someone to something like a car bomb has never really fit me comfortably. It's like wearing a wet wool sweater that is too small. It's smelly and itches. It is a different kind of grief and experience then what I go through with Chris. I have never been able to hear "thank you for your sacrifice" without visibly wincing or clenching my fists and imaging putting that fist into the face of the person thanking me. 

Sacrifice: an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure.

That's the definition I think of when I hear the word 'sacrifice' and I have to repress the urge to respond with "I didn't sacrifice anything." I never willingly surrendered J as an offering to any God. I want to scream that. None of us willing surrendered. 

I had a sinus infection and took too much cold medicine before J's funeral and maybe even one of Chris's pain pills left over from a surgery he had had. Numbing myself seems to be the way I handle this kind of grief. Military deaths are too bright and loud with colored flags and booming guns. Harsh. It prickles the skin with it's sharpness. I can wallow in my grief over losing Chris for days like a pig wallowing in the mud, but the grief over J is like rolling in glass. I have to remind myself of the very good lessons I learned from his death and how it prepared me for the next. I have to do my best to ignore the total destruction J's death caused our family and how each one of us had to learn in our own way how to behave in way that best honors J.

I recently read a book where one of the characters suffers a severe stroke in her thirties and she has to learn how to do everything all over again. Talking. Walking. Basic functions like buttoning a shirt or tying shoe laces. She's a cartoonist and has to learn how to hold a pencil and make sketches. She has to learn how to be the closest thing she can be to the person she was before the stroke. That's what grief is like. It's a stroke. After J, we all had to learn how to be the closest thing we could be to the people we were before. Some days, Hell...even most days, I feel like I came back from that stroke a better version of the person I was before. 

Just not every day. 

THANKFUL FRIDAY

For the last few days, my email inbox has been filled with ads for Memorial Day Sales. Take an additional 40% off here. Save up to 50% on things there. It's not just a Memorial Day Sale; it's a Memorial Day Sales EVENT! These ads are mixed in with all the other promotional emails on hosting the best bbq and the healthiest burgers to grill this Memorial Day weekend! There was a time when my Memorial Day weekend would be all about the barbecues and the shopping and that paid day off of work. I now know better. It's just the knowledge of the true meaning of Memorial Day came to me in the most unfortunate way. There have been six thousand eight  hundred and forty U.S. service members die since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. That's 6,840 families who understand the true meaning of Memorial Day. 

I used to think it was cliche to say "thank you" to a service person. I am still annoyed by people who thank me or my family for our sacrifice. A lot of that had to do with how I disagreed with the politics behind Operation Iraqi Freedom. I still disagree with the politics that send our service people into harms way. It dawns on me though that our service people do not choose where they serve. They just choose to serve. That's a pretty big commitment and sacrifice to say "hey, I'll go where ever you send me and fight who ever you tell me too." Sure they expect a few things in return like decent housing and good health care and some sort of income. It would also be nice if their family was taken care of while they are away on leave. These are simple and easy things for us to do considering that serving their country is a very dangerous job and there's a very real probability that they won't come home to that family. 

So today, I am grateful for those who choose to serve this country and who died serving this country.  Because these soldiers don't just fight terrorists, they also provide aid and medical help to those in need. They are humanitarians. They are teachers and they are protectors. There is a group of ROTC kids that go out and put flags up on every veteran grave site in the military cemetery where J is buried. There are a lot of grave sites; it's a big cemetery. They do every single one. And it's not just slap a flag up and run on to the next one thing. They ceremoniously unfold the flag and then stand at attention while it is being raised up the pole. I am grateful to these young people for their dedication in honoring and paying tribute to our veterans. I don't think they realize what it means to the families of those they honor. 

And, honestly, I am also a little grateful for the paid holiday. Cheers to you and your's and happy Thankful Friday!