June 4
THE GREAT EQUALIZER
Gently and quietly he clicks the door shut on his sedan so that even the breeze is unruffled. He deliberately walks toward the oldest row of graves in Section 60. His perfect posture looks military-trained, while the lines on his face mark him as Vietnam era. Always focused forward, the eyes of the man in his sixties hone in on one of the markers at the far end. Finally, he reaches the right one and slowly kneels in the grass. The grieving father bows his head.
Some have said that hospital waiting rooms are the great equalizers of life that injury and sickness recognize no social class, no ethnic divide, no age category. All are equally at risk. Cemeteries are even more equalizing than waiting rooms. None recover here.
The father does not tarry long at his son’s grave. He’s not really here to visit him. Instead, he has come to care for the living. While no one else dares interrupt a widow’s vigil out of respect for her grief, the father does. This tender, caring man can approach where others never should. He is a fellow sufferer, a tempest traveler… one who knows firsthand the cost of war.
The father begins his rounds of visitation to the daughters he has adopted in the graveyard. He knows each one by name and checks on their welfare. Over the months they have all visited Arlington to grieve alone together; this unlikely group has grown from being intimate strangers among the tombstones to caretakers of one another’s sorrow.
While he knows that he cannot bring his son home from Afghanistan, the father seeks to heal the history that death attempts to write in each of their hearts. Rising above his own agony, he reaches out to care for those around him, and in the process, finds refuge for his own soul.
Yes, Arlington is a graveyard, a place of the dead. It is also a showcase for valor, a field of honor for America’s most courageous soldiers. And for those knit together by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Arlington is a place of healing from war’s ultimate sacrifice.
When life’s raging tempest threatens to break my heart and my spirit, would you, oh Lord, step in with your authority and restore calm to the churning waves around me? Deliver me and bind up any wounds incurred by my sojourn here on earth.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)
June 5
DO I MAKE YOU PROUD?
An Army soldier approaches the row ahead of mine. I try to maintain my composure as to not disturb his expression of grief, but my tears come faster than I can breathe. The soldier kneels to pray. After a moment, he stands, salutes, and puts something on top of the grave marker. The soldier leaves quietly, returns; then leaves again. I stand motionless and uncertain sensing he may want to talk, but hesitant to interrupt. He comes one more time, so I join him.
“Was he a friend of yours?” I ask.
“Yes Ma’am, he was.”
“Would you tell me about your friend?”
He and the corporal were close friends. They served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. The soldier before me had been deployed overseas six times, and was struggling with the loss of many friends. I met him saluting his friend who died in 2005, but he was here for another friend whose graveside service I just witnessed. That friend was a medic, trained to work on injured soldiers while in transit on helicopters.
“Ah, the helicopter fly-over was for him.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“What can we do for you?”
“Bring us home, Ma’am. Please, bring us all the way home.”
We stand together in silence for a long time, two total strangers connected by the intimacy of honor. His countenance is beautiful. In spite of his grief, in spite of the horror he has seen he is beautiful. As soon as he leaves, I regret not getting his name. I wish I’d been able to listen to his story. I wished I’d prayed with him. I wish I’d prayed for his healing. I also wish I had told him how proud I am of him and the many sacrifices he’s made for my freedom. How I wish I had told him… but I didn’t.
Several minutes later, I pick up the piece of metal he left on top of his friend’s gravestone. It’s a dog tag. It has an American flag on one side and the words to Joshua 1:9 on the other side.
Thank you, Lord, that this soldier has confronted terrorism first-hand so that I never have to. Bring rest to his spirit, Lord, and remove any terror that has taken up residence in his heart.
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)
June 6
THE SMALLEST PATIENT
All right, what do we have here? I wondered as I opened the back doors of the Red Crescent (Iraqi) ambulance. It was a nine-year-old Iraqi boy who had been wounded almost nine days earlier by unwittingly picking up an anti-personnel device. Iraqi surgeons did the best they could for Saleh, but told his father to prepare for his death. The boy’s father bribed a friend who was a Red Crescent ambulance driver to drive his son to our base for another chance.
Once inside the hospital, we were horrified to see that his abdominal wall had been completely blown away, exposing the intestinal tract. His right arm which he had lost in the initial blast had not been treated in nine days; it had been bandaged once and it was covered in blood and pus from his draining wounds. The portion of his remaining left hand was mangled almost beyond recognition.
The Air Force medics and I operated on him nine hours that first day. God show me the way, was whispering in my head over and over. By the grace of God, he began to stabilize.
As a military medical corps, we were not designed to care for pediatric patients, but we arranged for some materials from our army brethren in Baghdad. Every day I emailed a pediatric surgeon friend for advice, and she arranged for a company in Britain to overnight express us all the equipment necessary to do what’s called a wound vac.
This boy, Saleh, had just one hand left that was salvageable.
“If we take this other hand what kind of a life would he have left?” the orthopedic surgeon mused.
“Tell you what, Eric,” I replied. “If I can figure out a way to keep his belly together, you figure out some way
