A tearful day

I responded to a dear friend who wrote kinds words of support today. She lost her beautiful daughter four years ago.

Thanks, Sista.

I know you get it. Over time I came to articulate that it is sort of like when a family has a baby in NICU or a child missing. We know where they are and fear the worst and then the element of how wrong it is and our child is doing it, participating in it. His soul has a mission and I totally support that. I am in awe of him sometimes and the shared journey of ours. I saw him come in at conception and he was so dear and cherished. So awesome. So much anguish is from the time of his early teens when Mario was so brutal to me and I was "hiding" it and our relationship, from the ga-ga begining to the abuse, harmed Joe. FORGIVENSESS ... knowing HE chose ME for whatever his purpose. He is a loved, cherished, and cared for being. I am curious about WHO he will be when he returns. How will he be and his thinking ... what will he be led to do? WHAT is HIS role in this? Looking back at his articulations as a child becoming a man, he was so about the world changes. The Warrior Soul.... the GENTLE warrior ... clearly, Mario (soul level) was part of Joe's plan.

The hard part is like when you were with Rachel in ICU ... the waiting for the prognosis ... that part is part of this. WHAT, when, how .. will he be ok? Survive .. keep limbs, vision, brain? We he live his life like so many VN vets? Last year this time I wrote him a "love letter" when I realized he was going AWOL on me --- I am, had to be, as I am sure you considered, inspite of your premonition, of the possibility of caring for a disabled child for the rest of life.

It's also a bit like parents who know their child is abducted or a runaway (as Joe chose this) -- the "just can't get to him or stop anything or protect him" part of it. If only all of these people in between me and him --- from the Guard Family Assistance people who have direct contact with the redeployment who can have direct contact with him or his commander to the Alaska television journalist who was embedded in Joe's unit and SAW him, to my senators, to congress, to the Pres --- would do something. It's like sitting in NICU day after day and NO ONE seems to see or notice that I am unable to function wholey. I can't (Couldn't) take care of my basic needs.

I think often of the mother of the young woman who disappeared in Aruba last year. She was a maniac to some in her vicious vigilance. I totally get it --- I FEEL it on the inside. A mother does not stop her innate, physiological response to her child in danger. I imagine my eighty year old grandmother still feeling this way about her sixty year old son. I think of the next forty years (I plan to be at least ninety when I finish up my own mission here). I think of Joe being in the military for the next tweny years. Will this SCREAM -- the physiological response stuck in my gut -- EVER stop? How does the mother of that young woman or the parents of the two US soldiers MIA ever breathe? Or, the families of the men and women who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq .. or anywhere for any reason?

I haven't cried for about three weeks. Yesterday and today I am teary. I sent a birthday package that had come back, and a new one with ten dozen cookies. Enroute to the PO I heard Diane Reams on the radio speaking with soldiers sharing their experiences. I sat listening in the parking lot to a very articulate man in the same rank as my son. He spoke of his experiences of going into Iraqi homes and terrorizing them, ah, I mean interrogating them. How do people hear believe that all of the terror is out there and directed at poor little ole us who have seventy percent of the world's resources? I wondered how is my son't experience of the the war affecting him? The boy conceived and raised by a rabblerousing, grassroots, anti-stupid rules naturalist hippie and a conscientious objector in VN gone to prison for five months instead of going to war -- who came to admire Colin Powell as his hero-- WHO will he be when he comes home?

I imagine he'll come home and like others in his generation to whom this world now belongs, fallen in on them, will have fix this mess. My imagination and hope that sustains me some days is that he will come home to the next phase of the unfolding of his soul's journey - MY HERO, who will know in his soul and his bones (because of genetics and upbrinign) how to go about creating peace and equality in the world. I am so proud of him.

Tears are falling now. I would give anything to hear my son's voice, see his face, and nuzzle in his neck taking his scent into every cell of me.