Rest in Peace

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States.  I am an Army "brat."  My father was a second lieutenant at Ft. Benning, Georgia when he met my mother.  They divorced many years later and my mother remarried.  When my stepfather retired, he was a full colonel in the Infantry and had served three tours of duty in VietNam.  My son, Shawn, is an Air Force reservist for fifteen years now.  He repairs computer systems for the C5 and C15 aircraft.  

My prayer is for world peace.  I would hope that none of my three sons ever has to be involved in a war and that no mother ever loses a son or daughter to conflict anywhere in the world.  Why can't we learn to negotiate and settle our problems in a civilized manner?  Why don't we teach our children, from their earliest years, better ways of handling conflict?  As a nurse, I look at those sweet babies in the newborn nursery, lying there next to each other, without a shred of hatred or animosity in their minds and ask myself, why can't it always be that way?  

The following is not a happy poem.  It is an all too cold reality that takes place every day.  I am posting it on this Veteran's Day with my prayers for every single person who has lost their life in service to this country and for all the families who have suffered and continue to suffer without their loved ones.  

Rest in Peace

He was such a precious child,
Fair haired with eyes of blue,
Always into everything,
With laughter bubbling through.

Everybody loved him,
He just had that special way,
Of making it seem sunny,
On a cloudy, rainy day.

He'd always help another,
When things would go awry,
So all of us were saddened,
The day he said goodbye.

His unit reached Iraq,
And was only there a week,
When his mother got the news,
Of which she couldn't speak.

A roadside bomb exploded,
He lay in a pool of red,
His blood slowly oozing,
A paramedic pronounced him dead.

Carmen Henesy

Copyright © 2007 Carmen Henesy. All Rights Reserved