The Sorrow of War

Today: 986.

1,000 postcards. 1,000 names. 1,000 loved ones.

I can only imagine what it would look like to see the stacks of postcards that would represent every human killed by war just in my lifetime. Or every human being killed by war since WWII.

My limited computer knowledge didn't include a way to get the names of the 32 most recent deaths off of the Internet and onto a spreadsheet (Mr. CFP taught me today - too late. I needed them last night). I decided I would have to type them all, including age, rank, and hometown. I was not too happy about having to do that. I thought that the people who sent me the rest of the names should have sent me these, also. I didn't have much time to mess with it.

But I typed.

And typed.

And thought about each person whose name I was typing.

I would notice a funny-sounding hometown name or a last name that I knew probably brought teasing to the person, especially in grade school and junior high. Then I thought about how, in boot camp, it's common practice for recruits to endure demeaning name-calling. Most likely, they were the subjects, again, of harassment about their name or their hometown. And then they went to war. And then they died.

If we really thought about the possibility that our cruelty would be one of the last things someone experienced before they died, would we still say cruel things?

It wasn't long into my typing exercise before I was no longer irritated by having to do it. I was grateful for the opportunity to share some time with these young men (they were all men) who died for whatever cause they believed in.

Some of them were only 18 years old! Eighteen. I remember it. I turned 18 the summer after I graduated from high school. I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Because of that, I didn't go to college right out of high school. Aimless, I got a job at a loan company. While hanging out at Cheeseman Park, a cult found me and I allowed myself to be taken in. How many of these young soldiers were like me? Not knowing what they wanted to do next, feeling aimless, or having a sense of limited options, they sign up for what I consider to be another type of cult.

The sorrow of war.

That is the phrase Kathy Kelly kept mentioning in her talk last night after out postcard-signing event.

The sorrow of war...