Three lives and those affected

[lostnfound]

Three coworkers have been directly affected by the occupation of Iraq; I've mentioned each here over the past year; thought I'd do a followup:

It's been six weeks, but the young man blown into the sky is still lying in a hospital -- his eyes occasionally open and able to squeeze his wife's hand, and that is all for now. She is by his side every day, basically all day, while she waits for him to be able to talk or respond in other ways. His mother likewise waits, both women taking care, worrying each day over his recurring fevers and his medical tests. Their normal lives must feel suspended, far from friends and jobs, or else this has become the new normal. I cannot imagine what this vigil is like, nor what it is like to be expecting your first child in the midst of this uncertainty. In a normal world, he would be caring for her, taking her out to be pampered a bit before the responsibilities of motherhood hit, and she should be blissfully enjoying herself in the delightful stage of pregnancy where morning sickness is long gone and feeling big-as-a-whale has not yet hit. (Who took this from them?? The immediate cause was one suicide bomber on the other side of the world, but we who see the circle of things in life go back a step further to the commander-and-thief who sent him there on a senseless and impossible war of choice, and a step further back to the complex that Smedley Butler saw so clearly which is the real root cause. Is it unAmerican to see the circle of things?) His mother's anguish must be unfathomable. She is a 'steel magnolia'.

It's been six months, but the young lady whose fiance was killed in Iraq still wakes up some days screaming from nightmares, and struggles to cope with feelings of anger or betrayal toward the system that sent him there, while remaining close to her former fiance's parents, despite their conflicting views of the purpose, or purposelessness, of the war.

The pretty soldier's wife who didn't know what a "neocon" was has gotten a divorce.

Each injury, each death, each separation takes its toll, not just in the moment, but for months and years and a lifetime afterward.