Funeral

Took me a while to calm down enough to post. Helplessness begets anger and frustration with me. Seeing a close friend whose body lay in a coffin, and knowing the contributions made by another close friend - contributions that were being ignored by the Army against the soldier's wishes was quite a bit to bear. The alternative was to disrupt a funeral, and I don't like being arrested.

Even when the sparse gathering (maybe 20 people, all known to each other, except me) was invited by the pastor to come share memories, I didn't. Not because I didn't have any, but because I couldn't have done it without editorializing, resulting in bad consequences.

Too late I realized what I could/should have done. I should have printed out or had sent a picture of him with his family in Knoxville - a portrait of him with his mother, father, 3 year old sister. And tucked it beneath one of his white gloved hands for all to see. To let them know that they were represented.

I could have admonished them, not for not loving and caring for him, but for allowing that love and care to vanish like morning fog when his life got difficult and he needed someone to help him on his final leg to adulthood. None of those present did. The people he named as next of kin did.

I could have filled them in on his life in the gap between their memories of him as a boy and his death as a man. Of a loving home with a room of his own to come to during his leave. A room referred to, not as a guest room, but as Chris' room. Of pictures of him carousing with his sister and her cousins, and of the entire clan he was engulfed by when these people took him in. Of their "Proud Army Mom" decals on the car. Of their shared messages on their webpages.

And of their struggle to come to grips with a soldier who was denied his wish to come home to them, even if his spirit had departed in a faraway land.