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.

I cannot believe that it's been nearly three months since I posted--maybe this is a sign of healing?  We had a longer than average winter, what with snow late in March on the day I was supposed to go to Ft. Meade to take part in a dedication ceremony for a medical facility but something about the four inches of slippery wet snow, not to mention the fact that the ceremony was to be in a tent while the temperatures hovered around freezing . . . . anyway, I bailed as did almost everyone else.  My sister was visiting and I couldn't see making her tromp around Ft. Meade in the snow, particularly as I was not that sure about where I was going.

Which brings me to the one thing about Ft. Meade.  The Maryland Gold Star Mothers meet there every other month.  I find it hard (emotionally) to enter the fort but I do it and over the last couple of years I've gotten used to the routine.  Except our most recent meeting, this last Saturday, happened to be a day when protesters were expected so they closed the main gate from Rte 175, the gate we normally use.  I couldn't quite believe they would do that, especially since I had not heard anything about it, so I drove there anyway, only to find it blocked off.  So I turned left instead of right in order to go back to the gate that really was open and was immediately stopped by the MPs.  I ended up having to keep going east in order to find somewhere that would let me turn around and head west again . . . I was a wreck and I only saw two protesters anyway.  Getting through the new gate meant having my car thoroughly inspected, including the mirror under the car technique and while a soldier with a very big gun looked on.  I was nearly in tears by now but I did get through the process, they gave me good directions and in the end I was only 30 minutes late to the meeting.  Everyone else was late too so we started 40 minutes late.

Our secretary was away so I got to take minutes which I'm still turning into something readable.  Sadly, our founding president, Carol Roddy, has just been put into hospice care and news of her condition hung over us as we started.  I will say that many of the Gold Star parents seem to have suffered serious health problems at an earlier age than one might expect.  I am sure that the shock of loss and the continued grief have a lot to do with this.  I will be praying for Carol and her family in the days to come.

And all of that without even mentioning Memorial Day! This year, more than usual, people noticed that veterans were being honored but the fallen were kind of forgotten.  Now I have said often that I don't mind the picnics and sales:  Memorial Day started as Decoration Day which involved picnicking among the tombstones you were taking care of--sort of having lunch with the dead I guess.  And Thomas loved shopping for some reason so sales seem appropriate.  But in all of that, you need to remember why we have this day.  Our Memorial Day barbeque involved close friends and a toast to the fallen and especially to Thomas.  We flew our flag.  We went to Mass at Gate of Heaven and visited Thomas's grave.  But mostly, we remembered.  We finally got Thomas's picture drawn by Michael Reagan (3rd cousin to the president!) and it came back to us framed before Memorial Day.  I was asked to write a blog entry for Serving Together, a program that's grown out of the Veterans Collaborative.  I will try to link to it here.


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