Rest in Peace

Last June one of the soldiers from my husband's unit was killed in Iraq. Of all my personal experiences with the burdens of Iraq, memories of Sgt. C stuck with me oddly, even though I didn't really know him or his family.

Sgt. C did his first tour in Iraq with my husband in a National Guard military police unit. When they returned, for reasons I will never understand, Sgt. C joined the regular Army and was stationed in Ft. Bragg, NC. Soon after he was sent back to Iraq.

He was later killed by a roadside bomb. He had five children and a wife at home. He was due to return home in September.

We were never real close friends at all with the Sgt. C family. But Sgt. C and his kids were active in my son's little league and they went to the same schools as my kids. We used to see them often at the ball park...their five kids beyond rambunxious. Even if you didn't KNOW them, you always knew when they were around.

What was innocent wildness from a pack of kids with little supervision and an absent father turned into haunting memories for me that will never leave my head. I remember when the unit first left to Ft. Polk, LA for training before shipping off to Iraq. The yellow ribbon ceremony was in a hanger at the local airforce base. The general told us how this mission was the most dangerous mission of all for the state's national guard. (That was real reassuring.) The local restaurant fed us barbeque. The yellow ribbon magnets were selling like hotcakes...so naturally they upped the price from $3 to $4. Nice gesture to the departing war heroes. We said our miserable goodbyes and the soldiers were put on a bus to head out.

The Sgt. C kids were balling...and I mean BALLING. And when five kids scream and cry, again, you can't miss them. I remember thinking how I wished they would just calm down. They were overwhelming eachother with emotion...like a chain reaction....all clinging to their mother, slobbering and sniveling. And the chain reaction was spreading to my kids. And probably for selfish reasons I just wanted them to quiet down. "Just calm down, just calm down" I kept thinking to myself, so we all didn't have to hear the wrechedness, like a wailing injured cat you just want put out of its misery.

Later, we all had the chance to visit with the soldiers in Alexandria, LA before they headed overseas. A last goodbye...again. I remember wishing I didn't have to do it. Sometimes you reach a point after a goodbye when you reach peace. Another goodbye just started another war of emotions. But I couldn't just NOT go. They left on our 15th wedding anniversary. Some way to celebrate.

Again, the Sgt. C clan was at the hotel where we were staying during this last-goodbye-again visit. The kids were WILD in the pool. It was quite hilarious at the time watching them go crazy while their mother tried to coral them. She didn't just descretely do it either...screaming at the top of her lungs, flinging her arms, all of them too fast for her lumbering, child-warn body to catch them.

I watched it all happen relaxing in the hot tub. Sgt. C got in, trying to relax I suppose, though his children pestered him. It was just me and him in the tub. We never talked or anything but I just remember him so clearly as if it were just today that I soaked with him. His tattoos, almost prison like. I thought to myself at that moment that he must have had a rough life and the military was his saving grace- from the law or maybe just financially. His look of exhaustion over what was to come was a look all the soldiers had at the time. The anticipation of what was to come was written on their faces and you could sense that no matter how much they loved their families, they just wanted to be there already. Their eyes looked passed their wives and mothers into the visions what might be waiting for them across the ocean. And the shadow of death weighed heavy on Sgt. C's shoulders.

And I remember the sounds of his kids crying as he left.

God bless his children today as they still cry.

Finding My Mom

I really started to believe my mom turned republican. I mean it was really starting to scare me.

I guess with age comes a stronger conservative leaning, but she was about to fall over the edge. I first noticed it when she expressed how much she despised Al Gore. I disregarded it as a personal issue. Well as we all know, he lost the 2000 election and I really suspected she voted for Bush, but I'll let her go to her grave, and mine, with that bit of info. I forgive her, as I have forgiven the 10 bijillion other Americans for their momentary lapse of reason in electing the idiot. Twice. Anyway, she never really would admit why she hated Gore so much. She just did.

My mom then began to hate the Clintons. I mean straight up hatin. I had always admired the fact that my mother had survived the deep south segregation with a realistic perspective of the harshness of racism and a fairly liberal outlook on life. Racism was the one thing she NEVER tolerated in our home. She did, after all, marry a radical Mexican. My aunt, on the other hand, did not. She still actually believes blacks were better off as slaves because they were taken care of, and they apparently cannot take care of themselves. Seriously, she believes it.

So here my mom was, 2008, telling me she would move to England if Hillary wins. And never admitting whether she liked Obama or not, truly keeping me in suspense. Now granted, I support Obama, but it has nothing to do with the Clintons themselves, who after all didn't have the worse of terms. It comes down to leadership. And I'm afraid with all of Clinton's touting of being the most experienced, she participated, in my opinion, in the most irrevocable mistake in US history- the Iraq War. I tend to believe that when you fuck up that bad, there is no redemption. Obama, on the other hand, with his young, inexperienced "head in the clouds" perspective chose not to partake in Bush's war game. I call that foresight and I will forever respect him for it.

Enough about me.

So its primary day in New Mexico and the suspense is killing me. I want to ask her if she needs a ride to the polls but I'm terrified of what the answer might be. How is this happening? I talk to my mom about everything!!! (In New Mexico only registered Dems can vote in the democratic primary.) So I decided to call her and let her know I'm leaving work early to vote. What if the one person I'm closest to has swapped values? She watches over my children! I feel on the verge of an identity crisis, as if I just lost my mom in a crowd of mediocrity. Really, I just didn't want to know.

"Hey can you take me with you?" She says, "I haven't made it to the polls yet today and I hate to get out in the traffic."

I peek over her shoulder at the polls and see she has marked a big X next to Obama.

I found my mom. All is well.