Tuesday was Veterans Day. The Wounded Warriors came in this weekend. There was about twenty or so of them. I was supposed to go to the Marine Corps Ball with them on Saturday but I couldn’t do it. How do I go to a Marine Corps Ball my son can’t go to? Adam wanted to go to the ball so much. He talked about it; he couldn’t wait until he could go. He was in the desert, training, so he had to miss that first one he was eligible to go to. And he didn’t make it home for the next one. I went to it last year and the whole time I was there I cried and kept asking myself what I was doing there! Watching those young marines dance and laugh, knowing some of them might not be alive next year, broke my heart. When I think about last year I don’t know how I sat there. I guess I was still in some kind of shock. Of course, the valium helped too. I did go to the Veterans dinner on Monday night and the breakfast on Tuesday but, boy, was it hard! Seeing those young men, some of whom were barely able to walk across the stage, just about did me in. I recognized one of the young wounded marines from last years ball. What a change a year can make! Last year he was in his dress blues, this year he had on a pair of jeans that looked too big for him and a gray hoodie. He looked sad and lost. I went up and hugged him after the breakfast; I wanted to bring him home with me. I don’t know how old he is but he looks like he is about 18. I haven’t been able to get him off my mind. I have cried all day. What will become of him, how will he handle all he has seen and heard? all the things that our country has asked him to do? I pray that God will send people into his life that will help him through this.

Josh took these pictures before him and Adam went out on New Years Eve 2006. Adam was on predeployment leave. He left for Iraq on 18 Jan 07.

I dreamed of Adam last night. I pray that I will dream of him but I'm not sure whether it is better to dream or not dream. Even if it is a good dream, you feel such heartache because you wake up to the reality that he really is gone. In my dream last night, he was smiling and seemed happy. He had that shy, mischievous grin on his face, the one that always makes me smile when I think of him. He hugged me and I didn't want to let him go. I put my cheek on his chest and thought to myself," I have to remember how he feels, how he smells" because in my dream I knew I was dreaming. Does that make sense? When I realized I was dreaming I started trying to scream, that scream that you can never get out. The scream that comes from the depths of your soul. The scream of the brokenhearted. I woke up crying and unable to breath. As I sit here, I'm still in my pajamas.

Last night before I went to sleep, I told myself I was going to go see my mom today but after I got up, it just seemed like too much of an effort to even get out of bed. If I didn't have to take the dogs out, I would probably still be there.

"When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding."

~ Helen Keller

Will this hell I'm living in never end!?!? It's been a year and a half AND today I get more death certificates in the mail. It says mode of death-MURDER! My God! Sometimes I think this really is hell.

"The strands are all there; to the memory nothing is ever lost."

~ Eudora Welty

An old woman and her tattoo

One of my regrets is that I didn't get a tattoo for Adam while he was alive. He used to try to get me to get one. He loved tatts! He would say "Awww, Mom you have got to get a tattoo!!" and I would say "Adam, I am an old woman and old women do not get tattoos!" A week after we buried him, I went with my daughter, sister, niece and his fiancee and we all got matching tattoos. Actually, my daughter and youngest son had already gone and got theirs but she went with me so I could get one like hers. Who would have ever thought I would get a tattoo?! Adam said if I ever got 1, I would want to get more. And he was right!

Me, sister, niece, fiancee & daughter.

Oh, how I miss my boy!

The future is not yet ours; perhaps it never will be. If it comes, it may come wholly different from what we have foreseen. Let us shut our eyes, then, to that which God hides from us, and keeps in reserve in the treasures of His deep counsels. Let us worship without seeing; let us be silent; let us abide in peace.

-- Francois De Salignac De La Mothe Fenelon

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace.

-- The Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-3