NPR has had a series of interviews during “Morning Edition” this week that I believe they are calling “The Mothers of Section 60.” Section 60 is the part of Arlington National Cemetery where the soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq are being buried. The mothers there all know one another and have formed their own group.
It’s a hard series to listen to on so many levels, but yesterday and today, as I was lying in bed with the radio on, trying to drag my brain to some level of awareness, I listened. Their interviews, the words they use, the emotions they describe…they are the same words and phrases I’ve seen over and over on the blogs of the medusas*. They talk about those dates that Mel, at Stirrup Queens, calls terrorversaries…birthdays, deathdays. One mother this morning talked about how she is just starting to be able to use phrases like, “my dead son.” I may have imagined it, but I think another mother, new to the group, kept shifting from past and present tense, something I had a hard time with. Another reminisces about asking one of the other mothers when it got easier. “It never does.”
Every question the interviewer asked these mothers, I knew how they would answer before I heard the words. Their answers were the same as mine would be. Empty. Lost. Angry.
There was one more similarity that wasn’t lost on me. The group that they have formed, they email, they meet. They have formed a relationship based on their shared experience, one that a great many people never have and can’t fully understand.
“When mothers and family members join the group do you see them going through things that you’ve already been through?”
“It’s interesting because you do. But at the same time, when we talk to each other, so much of the time we feel like we’re at the beginning because you feel like you’re losing it completely many times.”
“You feel like you’re in a different world than everybody else. You don’t speak the language and you can’t explain your language to them.”
“Then it must have been amazing for you to find each other, people who do speak your langauge.”
“Absolutely. And you feel like you’re alone. I mean, I came to Arlington thinking, knowing, rationally that you’re not alone but feeling like you are the ONLY person this has happened to, then you meet that first person that’s priceless.”
“So you feel such a relief that you can be who you are, and if someone comes up to you and says, “How are you doing?” you can really tell them how you are doing.”
It is those hands, reaching out of the darkness. The voices that seem to know when to be silent, when to speak softly, when to be boisterous and irreverent. Is it that we find strength in numbers? Does it make it easier to be lost in a crowd of others who feel equally out of phase with everyone else? Whether you had nineteen years, three weeks, ten minutes, or no time at all, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. It doesn’t get any easier.
I don’t have any answers. I don’t really have any point to this post. Consider it a random brain dump of thoughts that have been circling like ill-tempered sea bass (a virtual cookie to whomever knows the source of that) for the two days I’ve been listening to these interviews.
*From the first moment I read their description, I loved the concept of being a Medusa. It feels…right. You tuck the snakes up under your cap to try to get through a day. You watch those around you take sidelong glances, afraid to catch your eye, worried of saying the wrong thing. At the end of some days, it’s all you can do to get through the front door before you let the snakes writhe free, as the paralyzing bolts of light shoot from your eyes, taking down any innocents who get in the way. This trying to pass for normal, when my new standard for “normal” has shifted 180 degrees, is exhausting.
*big hugs*
I am so so sorry.
I missed yesterday’s (will run off after this to check on podcast or transcript) but heard this morning’s. And like you, I got every single word. I think it’s a big reason why Memorial Day is actually a very different holiday for me now, I just ache reading the stories from parents because now I feel I get them. Really get them. Sitting in my car, I had half a mind to just up and drive there sometime (3 hrs. away) and talk to them, too.
I also kinda like how they just showed up with chairs and water and just sat. And just were. There. Taking it all in. I often wish I had time and inclination in my day to just sit in a chair and just be with it.
I’m trying to find the steel to read “Final Salute” about the marine who goes around and tells families and arranges funerals. I heard him interviewed, and boy, I got every line of that program, too.
“Sitting in my car, I had half a mind to just up and drive there sometime (3 hrs. away) and talk to them, too.”
I had that feeling too.
Grief is grief. The circumstances of the loss may be very different, but at a gut level, it’s very much the same. I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but after 9-11, I felt a certain bond with the families who had lost loved ones. I’ve certainly never lost anyone in the way that they did, but on a deep level, I felt empathy with what they were going through. (The fact that my husband works on a trading floor near the top of a skyscraper in a major financial district also likely has something to do with it.)
This sounds like a great documentary; I’ll have to check it out later.
I agree that grief is grief. and you don’t know it until you’ve lived it. it cannot be learned, only experienced. the circumstances may vary, and so may an individual’s process. but it’s the loss of a much loved child all the same.
and this?: “This trying to pass for normal, when my new standard for “normal” has shifted 180 degrees, is exhausting.” I couldn’t agree more.
That last bit that luna picked up on… that struck me, too. Beautiful post.
Hugs to you. Another beautiful post.
Very interesting. I hadn’t heard of those… I might have to check them out. It’s shocking how similar it all sounds.
After I lost Devin was thinking a lot about a friend of my mother’s, friends of the family we’ve known all my life. They had four children; one died at around age 12 (I think?) in a farming accident. And I found myself thinking about her a lot, thinking, “I get it now. I know what she felt, what she feels.” I mentioned it to my mom, and she told me her friend said something similar to her… a gut reaction when she found out about my loss. That shared emotion, the shared grief.
It truly is its own language.
I was listening to it a little bit in the car with my teenage son. I was unable to turn it off when we got to our destination, especially since the woman who was talking at the time had lost her son Nicholas (same name as my dead baby). So Alexander turned it off, as he just wanted to get where he was going. “yeah”, i said to him, “i guess we know this tune pretty well anyway.” It is not the same, but it is the same.
Like tash, i also heard the NPR story about the book “Final Salute”, i ordered it the next day & we (Alexander & I ) read it — it is just beautiful and absolutely worth reading. Difficult, though. I admit that part of my motivation for getting it so fast was that Alexander is in this teenage thing where he sees himself joining the military & flying fighter planes….so i am trying to AVOID such a choice of career. He read the book also, though it seems not to deter him. Sigh. But in any case the book is amazing.
I used to be very politically active, and very aware. And after A died, I found I had to tune out the news for a while because I couldn’t take thinking of all the mothers, all the families losing their children in the war.
I am not sure I have it in me to listen to this series, or to the Final Salute one that Tash and Kate mentioned. But I might try anyway…
Thank you for this.
Though the topic is quite different, I can imagine that it would resonate with you.