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A soldier, a mother, a cemetery

Sep-15-2005 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT , Homefront

The following is a very nice column regarding Laurie Whitham, who has been a frequent visitor to this site. Her son, SPC Chase Whitham, died in Mosul in May, 2004.

Link to Full Article
By Bob Welch, The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - It goes away for the rest of us, the war in Iraq. But not for the woman at Springfield Memorial Gardens on Tuesday afternoon.

Our grief is the Monopoly equivalent of landing on "Jail" without having drawn the ominous ``Go directly to ...'' card. We're just visiting. Another roll of the dice, and we're off and playing again.

We flip the page in the newspaper that reports the latest casualties. We turn the channel. We get distracted by hurricanes, by new seasons, by our own lives.

But the Laurie Whithams of the world can't so easily lose the past in the present.

Which is why I've come here as she makes her monthly pilgrimage to the grave of her son, Chase, a Marist High graduate who died in Iraq in May 2004. He was 21.

I wrote about the Whithams last December. Laurie is the one who donated the final $17.04 of Chase's checking account to the Tree of Giving program because he had once been involved in it.

After the column ran, I was reminded of how easily we forget. And we shouldn't.

We should be reminded that, as the world rushes by, mothers of soldiers still kneel in front of their son's graves.

She comes alone to the place beneath the limbs of an oak tree. She pulls out scissors and trims the flowers and grass around the headstone. She brings new plants and waters some of the old.

"I look forward to coming," she tells you later. "This is his spot. I don't want it to look forlorn."

She sits down and thinks. Prays. Remembers.

Be sure to read the rest.


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