Grief Triggers

From being a hospice chaplain I know the process healing of grief lasts a lifetime. In the last two days, I have experienced triggers around Jason's wounding. This is a difficult week for me as we are heading toward the 5th anniversary events surrounding the start of the illegal, immoral, unending war.

Yesterday I was in a nursing home and one of my hospice patients asked for ice water. I headed toward the pantry and my heart stopped: the machine was the identical to the one at Walter Reed. Of course I was always getting ice for Jason while he was the WRAMC. I would purchase many different drinks, whatever he was drinking at the time-cans of soda and juice from the hospital cafeteria or canteen I would store them in one of those familiar pink plastic bedside tubs: stick the drinks in and fill the tub up with ice. This way Jason always had a variety of cold drinks if he asked for one and to serve to visitors.

My eyes teared up, I was in the nursing home but at the same time also at Walter Reed. I had to "refreeze" myself into this time and place 2 1/2 years after Jason's wounding. It is so real, those experiences at Walter Reed, so burned into my psyche that they are "always in the present" never the past. For in the emotional/spiritual world there is no past/present/future; only now. I can cross the barrier of "time" and enter the eternal now of Jason's suffering those horrendous wounds of war. It is a gift and curse. A gift for it is the foundation for my work for peace and a curse for it carries the suffering.

Today the Pax Christi group of St. Gertrude's held its annual silent march for peace in Iraq. We march about a mile around the Edgewater neighborhood. In the past we have had many more folks join us. But this year between St. Patrick's day celebrations all weekend, quite cold weather, the buildup to the Chicago wide march on Wednesday the 19th, the presidential election, community folks did not join us. So we were probably about 10. Carolyn, a Franciscan sister and I carried the banner-St Gertrude's Pax Christi, Chicago. Beautifully well done by Carolyn, (we lost our last one somewhere in the bowels of St. Gertrude's we think.)

We each carry a sign, one person beats the plastic can "drum," two people carry a "casket" draped in black. We say a prayer at the church, head toward Lake Michigan. Stop in a park and look East while we sing, "Peace, Salom, Sholom" as a chant five times. The walk normally takes about 1 hour and 1/2. Today we were escorted by a police car as we had been before. As we started out in silence, the beating of the drum took me back to the many marches I have been on, Jason's wounding, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with the loss of so many civilians and the wounding of countless others. My eyes teared couldn't keep them back; this time for the loss and destruction of so many other lives by war down through the ages.

I dedicate my life to ending war as a human response to conflict.
I re-dedicate my life, it is all I can do.
It is the only way I can heal from the grief, I cannot escape this role, I must do what I can while I live.