Memorial Day 2018 Part Two

I looked back over what I wrote yesterday and I must say that is not a model of entirely coherent speech.  But I said at the beginning, twelve years ago, that I was not going to edit once I pushed the publish button (except for egregious spelling errors):  I write this from the heart and my heart sometimes has to grope around for the right words.  Word order is a secondary task.

Our second stop on Memorial Day was on Ft. Lewis.  Last year we got our Gold Star Family ID cards that let us go on post without an escort  or (further) paperwork but we had never actually used them.  This time we drove right up to the main gate, showed our cards and were waved right on in.  It was the least stressful entrance process that I've ever gone through at a military installation and I really appreciate that.  When we lived in Maryland, I would go to Ft. Meade from time to time and going through the gate always left me shaky and a little tearful.  The day I couldn't figure out how to raise the hood of my car was painful.  Anyway, the experience at Ft. Lewis was light years better.

Thanks to Google maps, we drove right to the Memorial Park, which is a beautiful square block filled with memorials from the various Stryker Brigades.  I think the one from Thomas's unit was the first created:  we saw it in 2005 before it was moved to the park.  We parked across the street and walked up to the stone.  And OK, here is where I get hazy.  There were a couple of guys standing around (later I found out they were not in Bravo Company and weren't part of the group I had kind of arranged to meet).  There was a bunch of Army people in dress uniforms at one of the other memorials, obviously preparing for a ceremony.  Richard and I basically stood and waited to be approached.  And, in due time, Timothy arrived and walked up to greet us.  One or two other guys showed up.  We stood and they chatted about the deployment, about Thomas, about other guys they had lost.  We speculated about the ceremony that was obviously going to be held (I realized later that I knew at least one of the families that attended).  The men we were not meeting cracked open a couple of beers in memory of their friends and kept talking.  Eventually it was time to go so we said goodbye and got in our car to head home.

We had left our flag flying at home the day before, contrary to etiquette which demands that you take in the flag in darkness (if the flag is lit up you can leave it out).  We just hoped our solar lights had stayed bright through the night.

Thomas's name is third down on the far left.  He was the first Deuce Four man lost.

Memorial Day 2018, Part 1

It's been over a year since I wrote in this blog, a sign of healing, moving forward maybe, or maybe just an exercise in denial.  I still miss Thomas, and I think about him daily, but life has settled down greatly since those early days.   I forget sometimes how very much it hurt when they told me he had been killed.  The ambush moments nearly disappear and I do not seek them out.  Nonetheless, they still find me occasionally, and one of them got me on Memorial Day.  Well yeah, you might say, Memorial Day is bound to be a vulnerable day and I should have been a little more prepared but here it is:

Since moving to Washington state, very few people (comparatively) are aware of our Gold Star Family status.  We've been to several events with the American Gold Star Mothers chapter here but for the most part we've stayed quiet.  This year I suggested to my husband that we go to Dupont so I could run with the original chapter of Wear Blue:Run to Remember and then we could go to Ft. Lewis and visit the Stryker Brigade memorial there, possibly seeing a couple of the guys who  had served with Thomas.  This would let us honor and remember Thomas within a community, but quietly, which is what I think he would have preferred.

So, that is what we did.  I emailed Wear Blue to let them know we were coming, made a hotel reservation near Gunpowder Park where they meet up on Saturday mornings, and let a couple of Deuce Four guys know when we would be on Ft. Lewis (or JBLM as it is now known, old habits die hard!).   The morning of Memorial Day we caught a bus provided by Wear Blue to the park, about an hour before the run was scheduled to start.

Oh my gosh.  There were hundreds of people, there was food, there was a banner with the names of those KIA in OEF/OIF, there was music.  It was huge but I knew that a couple of other Gold Star moms were going to be there too.  Somehow, we spotted each other (and no, I don't really remember how we did that because we weren't dressed in our customary white and I didn't know the first mom I talked to at all before that day).  I am so glad that I got to meet them!  I also got to greet Lisa Hallett, who I had met several times on the Blue Mile of the Marine Corps Marathon in DC (Thomas's big sister Anna ran for Wear Blue in the MCM in 2016 as a Gold Star Athlete).

Around 9 the official event started.  We had a couple of short speeches, a prayer, and a gigantic Circle of Remembrance, and then the run began.  We went in waves, running through the park and the surrounding neighborhood with the help of the Dupont Police Department (and maybe the fire department too?  I was pretty dazed by then).  I followed in the footsteps of many, many people, remembering not only Thomas but the young men and women whose families I've gotten to know over the years since 2004.  I remembered those families too, the moms and dads and siblings, and the wives and children of the fallen.  I remembered those still fighting and prayed for them to come home safely.

It was a three mile run, not timed, just steps to dedicate, steps with purpose.  I chatted a little with others but mostly just ran in my own zone until I turned a corner and realized that they had put up  placards with pictures of the fallen that I was used to seeing on the Blue Mile of the MCM.  They were in chronological order because some of those names I knew of course and I counted down, past Chase Whitham whose mom had been the first Stryker family member to contact me, and then I saw Thomas's face.  This was my ambush moment and I just sobbed, all of that grief still there.  An arm went around my shoulders and I was surrounded by a little family concerned to make sure I was all right.  They kindly stayed with me until I calmed down and was able to smile again, and we took a couple of pictures because in this era of cell phone cameras, that's what we do.  I bless them every time I think about that moment.

Eventually I finished the run, met my husband, had a little lunch and then walked back to the hotel.  I showered and we headed off to Ft. Lewis to the memorial park.