I feel like a zombie. I don’t look dead or crave human brains for my next meal. I must look like my former self because people still recognize me …maybe just older and somewhat detached. I get up each day, do the usual things and go to sleep at night. Life goes on for everyone else and my anti-depressant dose is double what it used to be.
Everything appears normal on the outside, but a zombie resides inside of me. For the ??? time since 9/11 a pierce of my heart is deployed. I quit counting how many times my sons have been deployed. Such is the life of a triple Blue Star Mother.
“Sure I’m proud of their accomplishments”, I reply to well meaning people that ask about my sons. And, “Yes. They enlisted”, I answer those who are trying to make the point that they must want to be deployed. But those facts don’t matter a bit to a mother who is worried sick about her child’s life while he is deployed fighting in a war we know should never have happened in the first place .
Today, on the day we used to call Armistice Day, I will honor all my loved ones living and dead at the 11th hour, and pray that every military family finds peace. Tomorrow I will go back to being a zombie because others who are not carrying my load will go back to business as usual. I know many of my brothers and sisters in MFSO and other peace groups like Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War will continue doing the work needed to bring peace and I will have to let others carry my load while I am in the zombie mode where I need to stay until I know my son is home again and safe.
That is the way I roll. That is how others I know in Military Families Speak Out roll too. I am eternally grateful for the support from MFSO because they know what is in my heart. Thank you. I couldn’t make it without you.
Marcia Westbrook
Military Families Speak Out
West Virginia
