| THE POWER OF GRIEF BY JOHN HENRY LEE____________
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(arizona cardinals)
| One of my Vietnam buddies told me once that when his brother was killed in Vietnam, his mom went into the house and did not come out for seven years. Amazing, but I am not surprised.
Grief is a powerful force and effects all of us in different ways. For some, we move right on or appear too. For others, we never move on. Mary Tillman, the mother of Pat Tillman, is having trouble. I've been following her story and understand. She is after the truth. How was he killed? Why was she lied too? What is the Army trying to conceal? The questions are endless and when her answers come, will they satisfy her?
I doubt it.
Pat Tillman's loss is huge. Every loss in war is huge, but his strikes a blow most unusual. He was an American success story. -An NFL star football player with a gigantic financial future enlists in the military after the attack on the World Trade Center, becomes an elite Army Ranger, but is then killed at war by friendly fire.
Friendly Fire Happens All The Time
It happens all the time in war. I was amazed in Vietnam that we did not have more of it. Everyone had a weapon or several. We did not have the sophisticated communication systems we have now. But just as it did in Vietnam, now, under the best of circumstances, friendly fire happens!
I am not about to speak for the military or to justify any approach they have taken. I surely understand Mary Tillman's grief. Her grief appears to be vastly different than the grief of now celebrity protestor, Cindy Sheehan, who also lost a son.
Whereas Mary Tillman shuns the limelight, Ms. Sheehan seeks it. Sheehan's motives, I think, are somewhat suspect as she appears to have morphed into a sound bite. Ms. Sheehan's smiling photograph while being arrested appears to indicate that she definitely has moved on in her grief. Not so for Mary Tillman.
I don' think Mary Tillman will receive any final answers, even if the Army reveals all the facts it has. As sad as it is, at the core level, we have to accept that Pat Tillman made a choice to "join up." And, unfortunately, the decision casts him forever facing the possibilities; that, at war, anything and everything can and does happen, even horrible mistakes!
What makes the loss of life so hard to take-Tillman's life or any life in war- is the finality of it. And, these sacrifices aren't shared sacrifices, as only a miniscule number of our democracy owns the sacrifice. It is the peril of a Volunteer Army and it is simply a travesty.
Related Articles:
Pat Tillman: Great American Hero Killed By Friendly Fire
The Traitor and The Patriot
San Francisco Chronicle Article: Family Demands Truth
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Grief is a title wave that overtakes you, smashes down upon you with unimaginable force, sweeps you up into its darkness, where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces only to be thrown out on an unknown beach, bruised, reshaped.
Grief makes what others think of you moot. It shears away the masks of normal life and forces brutal honesty out of your mouth before propriety can stop you. It shoves away friends and scares away so called friends, and rewrites your address book for you.
Stephanie Ericsson-Compassion through the Darkness.
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