Wings of a Bird

WWII vet departs on his final mission - Robert Jamieson, Seattle P-I columnist
MOST 18-year-olds will never have to see dead guy after dead guy, day after day.
Most will never know the feeling of refusing friends out of fear a new pal will be slain by a sniper's bullet and the grief will be unbearable.
This is life in war, and while such fears could describe U.S. soldiers now in Iraq, they arise from the war experiences of World War II vets whose bravery and sacrifices too easily slip away in our blinkand-you'll-miss-it modern age.
So, it's a good thing Al was a keeper of such memories.
...
Fresh-faced and 18, he signed up for the Navy for the same reasons many young people today do: money. His father had skipped out. His brother had polio. His mother had five mouths to feed.
Weddle was assigned to the USS Tangier, moored stern to stern with the USS Utah, in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. He had just put on his dress whites that day when alarms sounded.
"Then I just saw flames. The Utah was getting torpedoed," Weddle told me. "I saw the red meatball" -- the red insignia from the Japanese flag painted on enemy planes. "You could see the Japanese pilots right as they flew over. Face to face."
...
His heart gave out at 84. As medics wheeled him to a waiting ambulance Saturday, he blew his wife a kiss and started to regale them with stories about Pearl Harbor. ...

Labels: grief, war

One Fatal Shot: A struggle to forgive one son, not forget the other - Seattle P-I
One bullet can pierce the hearts of many.
On Sept. 21, 2006, Jordan Jantoc accidentally shot his stepbrother Michael Miller to death while the two were playing with a gun.
In a series of interviews conducted between March and August 2007, members of their extended family describe how that tragedy has affected them.
...
Once a sprawling crew of a dozen children, teenagers and assorted adult relations who happily packed themselves into a used van for boisterous road trips, the family has disintegrated. It is now a strained constellation of isolated bodies tenuously held together by Timothy Miller -- father to Mikey and stepfather to Jordan -- who finds himself in the unusual position of being both a victim and defender of the accused, mourning the death of his athletic teenage son, while struggling to raise the boy who killed him.
...
When not petitioning the legal system, the bespectacled nurse spent every free minute scraping together money for his stepson's $25,000 bail while simultaneously trying to collect enough for Mikey's funeral. Two weekends in a row, the family set up a carwash and bake sale. Neighbors often dropped by, pushing a few crumpled dollars into the children's hands. ...

Labels: grief

Recalling horrors in the deadly details - Philadelphia Inquirer
Two went to give aid; one got a son’s final phone call.
... Elsie Goss-Caldwell, a West Philadelphia tax preparer, whose son, Kenneth Caldwell, was killed in the collapse of the North Tower.
". . . I was just sitting there on the edge of the bed, getting ready to come into the office.
"Then the phone rang, and it was Kenny. He said, 'Mom, I just want to let you know, I love you.' I was thinking, he's so silly, because the night before we were on the phone just laughing and talking. He had had a busy week the week before because he had to take clients out to dinner and the theater, and I was teasing him, saying I wish I could be that busy.
"All of a sudden, he said, 'I have to get out of here because there's a bomb.' And he was gone. I never spoke to him again . . . never, never, ever.
"That was it. I don't know if he hung up or got disconnected. All I know is, he was gone.
...
"At nighttime, I'd call his cell phone, and I would tell him I was coming to get him, and I'd tell him I loved him and not to be scared and that Mommy was coming.
". . . It would ring and go to voice mail, and his voice would come on, and I'd leave a message." ...

Labels: grief

Victims' mothers trying to move on, save others - Philadelphia Inquirer
... Mandell's 13-year-old son, Koby, was stoned to death in a West Bank cave six years ago by Palestinian attackers; Giddings' and Washington's loved ones fell victim to Philadelphia's gun-violence epidemic.
...
Several of the women who met Friday with Mandell belong to Mothers in Charge, a Philadelphia antiviolence group that offers mentoring, anger management and other supports. It is headed by Dorothy Johnson-Speight, who started it after her son was shot to death over a parking space in 2001
...
Giddings recalled how her son Andre, along with a friend and her mother, were shot to death at her mother's home more than two years ago in a neighborhood dispute by a man whom her son knew. ... "The loss of a child is one thing, then the loss of a mother is another. But to put those two together, do you know what the total sum would be?" she asked.
She tells people she is coping better, but she has her "moments." A nun told her once: "You can have a moment, but don't take an hour."
Her work with Mothers in Charge and her teenage daughter keep her going, she said. ...

Labels: compassionate people, grief

For a U.S. officer in Iraq, caring about the dead means caring for the living - International Herald Tribune
Heavy casualties are taking a tremendous emotional toll on a U.S. Army brigade in Diyala Province. The brigade chaplain, Major Charlie Fenton, likes to say a unique Psalm or Bible verse when he visits each dead soldier. But he says he has almost run out of suitable Scripture.
...
The troops ache and rage over the loss of friends. After Sebban was killed, "I was just mad," said Sergeant Roy Mitchell, who was wounded slightly in the attack. "I had in my mind, the first person I saw, I was going to shoot them."
...
Five men from Charlie Troop, interviewed separately, all recalled that Sebban yelled the warning that allowed some soldiers to take cover. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Poppas, the squadron commander, said Sebban faced an instantaneous decision: to dive for cover and save himself or to shout a warning to others. "He never sought cover for himself," Poppas said. ...

Labels: grief, war

Ex-Issaquah star Kim Evanger: A young, extraordinary life cut short - Seattle P-I
... On March 17, Kim, who competed in triathlons and was an experienced cyclist, was riding her bike down a busy road when she fell and was run over by a passing semi truck. She died instantly, according to her father.
...
[At her service] her brother, David, spoke. He was watching college basketball at a sports bar in Dallas when his cell phone rang and he learned that his sister had been killed. He ran outside into an alley and broke down.
"Then a peace that is not of this earth came over me," he said. "I saw and I heard Kim talking to me."
David said she had a message: "She said, 'Do not question God. Do not ask why this happened.' She said, 'I know why this happened. There is a reason.'"
David, fighting through persistent tears, then looked up at the sanctuary.
"Every one of you is supposed to be here in this room," he said. "She told me, 'I need you to tell them to consider the condition of their own hearts. Just tell them to consider, to open their hearts to God.'"
It was the most moving expression of religious faith I've heard.
This is the most excruciating experience a family, even one with profound faith, can experience. Yet Kim's glowing presence nearly overcame it.
"She was a gift, even if God took her away early," Marc Evanger said.
That's the comfort for her family and friends.
That spark that she gave them, although it glowed far too briefly, has reignited inside them and eventually will burn away the black clouds that shroud their hearts.
And it will endure. [end]

Labels: faith, grief

Living with memories of the Capitol Hill tragedy - Seattle Times
Survivors and victims' families find strength in each other.
Tony Moulton won't go anyplace unless there are at least two exits.
Marc Verebely couldn't go to work without taking regular breaks to crumple in a corner and cry.
Becky Martin pictured her son bleeding in the living room.
Such is the legacy of the mass shooting one year ago today on Capitol Hill.
Troubled loner Kyle Huff, 28, had been invited to a late-night party thrown by Verebely, Moulton and three other roommates at 2112 Republican St. Huff left the party briefly then returned with an arsenal, systematically killing six people and wounding two others before turning the gun on himself.
...
Meanwhile, the victims' parents had their own brand of pain.
"People don't know how awful it is," Becky Martin said of losing Jeremy.
Jeremy's friends understood, though. So Becky Martin and Jeremy's friends turned to each other.
Admittedly, they weren't exactly Becky's type. She was religious and they were not. She was an ordinary-looking preschool teacher while some, like Verebely, had many piercings and tattoos. She lived quietly in Marysville with her 24-year-old daughter Katie. Jeremy's friends sometimes stayed up all night partying.
But immediately, she recalls, "they embraced Katie and me. We were glommed into this little huddle together to get strength from each other."
Martin made sure her son's friends sat with the family during Jeremy's funeral. "They took care of us, we took care of them," she said. "They were and still are in some ways like a family," she said. ...

Labels: grief

On anniversary of Capitol Hillkillings, the pain lingers - Seattle P-I
As the city of Seattle prepares for a service remembering the victims of the Capitol Hill shootings a year ago, mourners have come together again, bonded through a single horrific act.
After her son went to a party and never came home, everything else changed. Her husband moved out. She stopped sleeping. She raged at God. But a year later, she still comes here -- her son's room -- to smell his clothes, his things.
On his birthday, she had packed balloons, his favorite sandwich and soda, and pictures to show him; his dog had had puppies. Then she picnicked alone at his gravesite, drenched in grief.
"It feels like it's been two weeks," Sandie Williamson said, weeping. "There's no way it's a year, because I'm hurting so much. He was my life." ...

Labels: grief

Severed Lives: Family and Friend Left behind - part of the Philadelphia Inquirer's Kids, Guns, and a Deadly Toll series, which includes profiles of the murdered children
..."My son loved to rap and challenge people," Adams says. "I told him, 'I want you to stop battling, because some people can't handle things.' The grudge came in because my son beat him rapping... and one thing led to another."
Kareek Adams was one of 24 young people - ages 3 to 17 - who were killed by gunfire this year in the eight-county Philadelphia region.
Nearly half appear to have been killed mistakenly - in gun accidents or by assailants aiming at others.
Almost all the rest were shot because of jealousy or perceived disrespect, or disputes over turf, drugs or girls.
"Is it just expected for the children to kill each other with guns?" asks Israe Gilliard. In July, her nephew Jarrett Gore, 15, was preparing to settle an argument with fists when he was shot by an acquaintance.
...
For weeks now, Adams has haunted the El like a ghost, using her cell phone to photograph strangers who look like the mug shot of the man police think killed her son.
The other day in the grocery store, she was sure she saw the gunman. She got so close and stared so hard that when she finally realized it wasn't him, she lied and told him she thought they had once dated.
...
When two teens robbed Robert's other sister, 19-year-old Lauren, in September, she was "more mad than upset." She refused to give up her purse until one youth suggested they shoot her; then, when the boy with the gun fled, she chased the other, who had taken the bag. She asked him to give her back something - anything - from the purse. "I said, 'Really, my brother just died. I don't need this!' "
But he refused.
...
Gussie Favors was at Sadir Reddy's house that day with Evens Occean, and the three friends were about to go shopping downtown.
According to court testimony, Sadir, 16, had been showing off his prized .380 semiautomatic for weeks. The question was: Who would carry the gun to the Gallery?
Gussie volunteered because he had the biggest coat. He started "twirling" the weapon - a weapon shared so often among the friends that during Sadir's trial it was referred to at least once as "a community gun."
According to Evens, Sadir had taken the pistol back to adjust the safety when the gun fired into Gussie's chest.
Gussie's dad doesn't buy it. "I think he meant to do it," Augustus Favors says of Sadir, although he acknowledges that "if that was my son that shot him, I might be thinking a different story."
Immediately after the shooting, Sadir called 911 to say a mysterious gunman had shot Gussie. Then he ran from the scene where his friend lay dying. ...

Labels: anger, grief, karma, murder

Give me five more minutes - Salon
I had always imagined with horror what it would be like to get the news that my son was killed in Iraq. Then it happened.
...
From the men who first told me the news, who had stood outside my home, compassionate Marines in dress blues, to those who entered my living room and placed before me the one remaining box of my son's life, and then, on bent knee, took out a smaller box from within the larger, and handed over to me Aaron's watch, the one removed from his body at the time of death -- it is to these men that I owe so much.
I began to wear Aaron's watch, which was still on Baghdad time. His watch became my watch. His alarm would go off at 3:28:24. Then again at 3:33:20. Aaron always said, "Give me five more minutes, Mom." This early alarm, its hidden meaning, meant only for him, for duty on a rooftop possibly, is 5:30 p.m. (the evening before) my time.
...
At times I believe I can learn to live a life without my son. After all, I must. There are other mothers who have lost their boys -- car accidents, war, illness -- who can shop for dinner at the local grocer's without the macaroni-and-cheese boxes suddenly causing them grief. But the memory of him is planted in everything around me. Inside of me. So much of him has been lost, is fading, breaking down. His blanket, his watch, his uniform.
The military uses commercial washers to clean personal items before they are handed over to the families. Understandable, but it leaves a synthetic laundry smell. Aaron's scent is gone. These are the realizations, the moments I've most dreaded. And they come out of nowhere. ...

Labels: grief, war

The Guts to Keep Going - NPR essay by Amy Lyles Wilson
I believe in old women who learn new tricks — gutsy, wrinkled broads who eat alone in restaurants and pump their own gas.
When my father died six years ago, my mother, then 79, had already done quite a lot. She had moved from her hometown in Mississippi to work in the big city even though many of her generation stayed put. She had raised three daughters, chaired PTAs, volunteered for a host of causes and nursed her husband through heart surgery. Along the way, she lost a breast and part of her colon to cancer.
What she had not done before Daddy's death, however, was pump her own gas.
...
As we drove off, Mother told me about her old friend Betty Ann whose husband Carl had died recently. It seems Betty Ann got in the passenger seat of their new Buick and waited a full three minutes for Carl to appear behind the wheel before finally hauling herself to the other side of the car and driving downtown. Telling me this story, my mother was crying just a bit. She said, "I guess you do what you have to do." ...

Labels: grief

Woman turns tragedy into personal mission - MSNBC.com
Son’s cardiac arrest prompts crusade for portable, public defibrillators
Stop by any big gathering of health care workers or educators, and you'll probably see Rachel Moyer sharing hugs and information with anyone who will listen.
Her personal mission is fueled by a memory she'll never forget — the day six years ago when her 15-year-old son collapsed during a high school basketball game. ...
An automated external defibrillator, or AED, could have restarted his heart, but like most American schools, Greg's didn't have one.
So Rachel Moyer started a nonprofit group, Parent Heart Watch, that's paid for more than 1,000 defribillators and lobbies states to require them in schools. Five states now do.

Labels: compassionate people, grief

Madrid terror trial will dig at deep wounds for survivors and mourners - International Herald Tribune
Jesus Abril lost his teenage son in a maelstrom of dynamite and shrapnel in the Madrid train bombings of 2004. As 29 suspects in the attack go on trial Thursday, Abril is seeking a semblance of closure so he can grieve in peace.
Abril, a former teacher, is eager to learn more about the motives of the attackers. His 19-year-old son, Oscar, was on one of four crowded commuter trains ripped open by bombs that March 11 morning by suspected Islamic militants as he traveled to a university.
"It's the only way we the victims can mourn in peace, although I am aware that the damage caused to us will never be repaired. Nobody is going to bring back our loved ones," said Abril, who is 54. "You go through the rest of your life feeling you have been stabbed with a dagger."
...
For 31-year-old Laura Jimenez, who lost the baby she was carrying and was left paralyzed in the attack, the prospect of taking the stand is simply too much.
She is resigned to accepting that fate placed her on one of the doomed trains that day and she will never know why. And she questions whether she will ever know for sure if the suspects on trial are really the ones behind the attack.
Lawyers want her to testify. But she says her pain is still too raw and seeing the suspects will do her no good.
"Why should I go? To tell people that I've been left in a wheelchair? People see that by themselves. I have nothing to say," Jimenez said.
Of the suspects, she said: "I don't hate them. To me they are like nonexistent entities." ...

Labels: grief

Despite his grief, a Palestinian calls for peace - International Herald Tribune
Even as Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, mourns his 10- year-old daughter, killed last week during a clash between stone-throwing Palestinian youths and the Israeli police, he says he wants to talk to Israelis about making peace.
It has been a long journey for Aramin, 38, a former fighter. He spent seven years in Israeli jails, from 1986 to 1993, for weapons possession and belonging to the Fatah movement, which was then banned.
But his views gradually changed, and for the past two years, he has been an active member of Combatants for Peace, a group of former Palestinian militants and former Israeli soldiers who have teamed up to urge reconciliation to both sides.
...
"I want to keep talking to Israelis so they can understand what happened to my daughter."
His daughter, Abir, was in an upbeat mood last Tuesday after completing a math exam at the Anata Girls School. She walked out the front gate and crossed the dusty street, where she bought a small gift for her mother, Salwa, who had helped her study.
As Abir emerged from the store, a clash was erupting between stone- throwing Palestinian youths and Israeli border police. A moment later, Abir was hit in the back of the head, a blow that threw her headlong into the street, according to her sister, Areen, 12, who was with her. After three days in Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital, Abir died without regaining consciousness. ...

Labels: grief, war

Gee Walker: One year on - BBC News
Huyton teenager Anthony Walker died a few hours after being found with an axe in his head on July 29th 2005. He had been attacked as he walked to McGoldrick Park with his girlfriend Louise and cousin Marcus Binns.
At Liverpool Crown Court in November 2005 Paul Taylor admitted inflicting a fatal blow to Anthony's head with an ice axe. Michael Barton, who denied the killing, was convicted for supplying the weapon and starting the confrontation.
After the trial Anthony's mother Gee Walker said that she forgave his killers.
...
Q: How do you feel approaching the anniversary one year on?
A: To be honest we’re not looking forward to it. It’s like opening an old wound. I’m sure we’ll remember the words of God, and the words of Anthony will encourage us, “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us”. So with that note we know we’ve got to go on, we’ve got to be strengthened, we’ve got to draw encouragement from the fact that he will give us strength to face that day. ...

Labels: compassionate people, faith, forgiveness, grief

Final Salute - Rocky Mountain News
... "He wasn't supposed to come home this way," she said, tightening her grip on the tags, which were linked by a necklace to her husband's wedding ring.
The women looked through the back window. Then the 23-year-old placed her hand on her pregnant belly.
"Everything that made me happy is on that plane," she said.
They watched as airport workers rolled a conveyor belt to the rear of the plane, followed by six solemn Marines.
Katherine turned from the window and closed her eyes.
"I don't want it to be dark right now. I wish it was daytime," she said. "I wish it was daytime for the rest of my life. The night is just too hard." ...

Labels: grief, suffering, war