Congressman and Former U.S.
Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw, who was severely wounded in combat, offers a touching piece
on Memorial Day at Foxnews.com on the widows of American servicemen who died in
action.
She wakes up from a pleasant
dream, for once. Usually, they are nightmares. He was in it this time, as if
nothing was wrong and life was just as it was. Boring. Perfectly boring. They
were laughing about something, watching TV together just as they used to. For a
split second she is still in the dream as she reaches her hand across the bed
to touch him. But he isn’t there.
She remembers now. And with
that realization comes the gut-wrenching wave of grief that she is all too
familiar with. Tears well up. She squeezes her eyes shut and clutches her fists
tightly in front of her face. She wants to scream but she knows from experience
it doesn’t really help, and it scares her son, who is still too young to
understand what’s going on. His dad was killed in action a year ago, when
he was just 2 years old. He misses him, she can tell, but it’s obvious he
doesn’t know how to process death yet.
… To miss someone profoundly
is to wonder what life would be like if they were still there. To know that
every moment would be better if they were back in your arms. Every morning
would be normal, instead of a crushing blow to the soul. Every evening would be
full of laughter, instead of just … empty. Even some marital bickering would be
welcome. What she would give, even for a fight over the obnoxious way he loaded
the dishwasher.
For those of us who have lost
our brothers to war, we grieve. We miss them. We never forget. But we are not
broken by it. We know this is the life we chose, to be on the front lines, to
serve in the most dangerous of ways. Crazy, maybe, but true
nonetheless.
But for the Gold Star widow,
she never pursued war. She was asked by her husband and her country to remain
behind and remain strong, often not knowing whether or not her soulmate was
even in danger. She learned to get through the nights while he was on
deployment by imagining what he was doing, picturing him bored and playing Call
of Duty instead of prepping for a mission. She had practice, given they had
been through four deployments together.
… This is the real Memorial Day. It is the day that
never goes away, with no real beginning and no end. It isn’t one day a year,
but a constant ache deep down in the soul of those who understand what real
sacrifice is. For everyone else it is only once a year, a time to recall that
these sacrifices happened at all and that we should remember them. For too
many, it’s just a day off work, a day to slash prices, a day to throw a party.
For the Gold Star families,
it’s a day they observe with a mix of gratitude and dread: grateful the country
remembers, grateful for the opportunity to speak openly about their loss
without getting an awkward look, but dreading the culmination of emotion the
day brings with it.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
Rep. Dan Crenshaw: The story of a Gold Star wife | Fox News
Note: I plan to interview
Congressman Crenshaw for the upcoming issue of Counterterrorism
magazine.
