Take Care of My Boys

A local boy was killed in Iraq. I didn't mean to know that. I don't watch the news and I don't read the paper. My ability to function depends on that. My remote isn't working and I didn't escape fast enough. There it was. I saw his picture. He was so young.

I'm crying for his mom, for his family, for an overwhelming feeling of lost potential, and for how vulnerable I feel.

I woke up this morning to a wave of fear washing down me from my head to my toes. That safe place in my head is gone. That place I could go when anything that I fear happens to someone else, and I could learn enough to know the circumstances or details that made me feel safe. The something that contributed that doesn't apply to my children.

I thought I had come to terms with the possibility of facing what that boy's mother is facing now. I had years to prepare. The first couple of years, I thought William would change his mind. Once I knew he wasn't going to, I deliberately worked at getting to acceptance of the possibility. Statistics became my security blanket. They have more of a chance of getting killed on the Pyramid Highway I would tell myself. No numbers to back that up. Just something to comfort myself. I still hoped by some miracle we would be out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We're not and William is in Iraq and Ryan will be going to Afghanistan and both of my boys will be where people want to kill them and I feel angry and scared.

I think I would have preferred drugs. At least I would still have some kind of a handle. I could send them to 12 step programs or into rehab. I don't know if I mean that. I'm afraid I do. I have no control here. I wish for my own chair in the Situation Room at the Pentagon.

I want to go back to having all of my kids within a couple of miles of me. I want to go back to sending one mass text to all of them telling them we are having dinner at my house and they all show up with their husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and children. I want to go back to watching them all talking and laughing and teasing each other. I want to go back to when the intense wave of feeling washing over me was gratitude.

Please, God, take care of the boys.