A Parent Sitting Up Late at Night (Aug 05)

I wrote this one during one of my frequent nights of being unable to sleep. Cindy Sheehan had just gone to Crawford, Texas to confront George W. Bush about the death of her son, Casey. Two days after I wrote this piece, I was in Camp Casey I.

Her story made me think, first as a parent of two sons, how it would be if they were in Iraq or Afghanistan in harm's way. It also made me think of how my parents looked when I returned from Vietnam.

I realized immediately upon seeing my parents for the first time in over thirteen months they'd been as much at war as I had been.

Only later in talking with my mom did I truly understand the inner turmoil that having a child go to war causes a parent. When I became a parent I had an even better understanding of what it means to have a child in harm's way.

Last evening I met a mother who had a son killed in Iraq. I listened to her compelling story near tears, with great sadness and with an overwhelming sense of rage.

As she talked, I saw in her the compassion and love I remember from my own mother. My mother was never the same after my tour of Vietnam and she was able to have me return alive if not entirely healthy.

Since I heard from many mothers about this article after I posted it, I felt it was something that does touch a parent in some way. I've decided maybe I should put it on top of my blog every so often as a remembrance of moms and dads who still grieve or still wait in horrible limbo.

With great love in my heart for all parents who face the grief or the constant unknown.
An now here it is in the year 2010. What's changed? Another quagmire in Afghansistan? This is why we voted for the young President who promised us dreams but has only kept the nightmares coming???
Terry Leichner, RN

Vietnam combat vet - USMC

Parent of two grown sons

Grandfather of three















Imagine (Written August 22 05)





Can you imagine what it would be like to see them come up to your door?



In uniforms and grim looks on their faces, and your child in the war.



Can you imagine how it must feel when they say those five words?



We regret to inform you…do you hear anything but those five words?



Can you imagine telling your husband or wife your child is gone?



Your child whose birth gave your greatest joy is gone.









I’m sitting here in the middle of the night wondering how someone could question a mother or father who lost a child to this war. How could someone in good conscience accuse a mother of politicizing the death of their child? Have we grown so disconnected with our humanity we can’t imagine the day a parent sees the dark colored car drive up to their street, up to their house and uniformed men emerge?



If you’re a parent, maybe you can imagine hearing those five words. It’s your greatest nightmare. You lie awake at night wondering where your child is at tonight.



You hate hearing the phone late at night. You hate seeing strange dark cars in your neighborhood. You can’t stand the newspaper or television news.



Then imagine the five words. Will you hear beyond them? Will you know before they say them?



Then there will be telling the rest of the family. You tell it over and over again…you child is gone. You want to scream out insanely. How can they be gone!!!!!?



Imagine the memories of your child first walking. The first words from their lips. The first worrisome cold. How can they be gone?



Imagine when you watched them swim, or skate or play baseball or football. Imagine playing basketball with them in the driveway in the fall as the leaves turned gold. Imagine the graduation and the joy in their face.



Imagine the day they leave your house to enter boot camp. The next time you see them their hair is short and they seem different and changed.



Imagine the last flight you see them off at the airport. The last phone call from the place of the war. The last letter.



Imagine the day when, with a broken heart and empty soul, you follow the dark hearse with your beloved child inside a casket. Imagine the numb feeling as you get out and see the burial plot where your child will be lowered into the earth. There will be words from the Bible, the Torah or Koran. They don’t bring your child alive.



There will be family all around you but you’ll be as lonely as you’ll ever be. They’ll hand you a triangle in red, white and blue like it will replace your child or there is something there to comfort you.



Imagine the final moments as the casket is lowered into the ground. The thought of your child leaving this earth before you rips at your heart. You hear over and over the words of sympathy and comfort and they are arrows that smash into your spirit in reminder of your child.



Then everybody leaves, you’re alone with only the terrible thoughts of the death of your child. You wonder how it really happened. You wonder if your child suffered. You wonder if they died alone. Death for you would be a welcome thing instead of these thoughts you have.



Imagine after the first month or so, everybody seems to think you’re able to be yourself again. They’ll never understand you’ll never be yourself again; you’ll never be whole again. Your child is gone and each day is a struggle to get up and each day the sorrow begins again.



Imagine returning to work and seeing the looks and the avoidance of some and the overbearing presence of others. They don’t know.



Imagine going to the grocery store and seeing a child with a smile like the smile of your child. You want to scream out your child is gone!! They’ll look the other way to avoid the sadness you hold in your heart.



Imagine the silence between you and other family members. You’re left to think of the moments of each day when your child would get up, go to school, return from school, go to a friends, eat dinner, go to practice, get ready for bed. Each moment so damn precious and you failed to recognize it at the time.



Imagine hearing a song and becoming tearful because it was your child’s favorite. Seeing a book and the memory of discussing the plot and characters with such joy.



That’s all I can do. Imagine it. My mom and dad feared it each day of 1968. They imagined it but they never heard those five words.



I imagined my sons being that dead child as I sat here this late, late night. My heart ached from just the thought of it. I had memories of them swimming and running. I remembered the day of each birth. I remembered reading Mark Twain or Watership Down to them.



All those memories of my children came flooding back to me and I couldn’t really imagine how gut wrenching awful it would be to hear those five fucking words!!!



“We regret to inform you….”