Support group meets Saturday, November 1st at 1:00 - 3:00

Call Linda Marshall for information about the support group at (503) 617-0997 or email Suzi Sutherlin-Martin at jmartin906@aol.com. The regular monthly support group meets the first Saturday of each month at the UCC Frog Pond Church in Wilsonville -
For google map directions to the church, click here.

One mother wrote this about the meetings…

Yesterday was the meeting of the “Military Families Speak Out” support group I attend once a month. There weren’t very many of us this month — just 5 parents, three with sons in the Army and two with sons in the Marines, sitting around a table in a church fellowship hall. We started out talking about a hearing in our state legislature. The hearing was on a resolution calling for bringing our troops home from Iraq.

Some of us testified about our sons at the hearing. Their stories vary. They patrol streets and disarm bombs in Iraq.

They practice in the California desert, getting ready to man checkpoints on the Syrian border and transport troops through Anbar Province. They wait — to go to war for the first time and to be sent back for the third time. One struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Our stories are all the same. We think the war in Iraq is unjust and we oppose it.One mother critiques her testimony, saying she doesn’t think she should have talked so much about herself –about how worried and scared she is. No, several of us insist, you were great! Public speaking has been part of my job for years, but I can’t talk about my son going off to war without crying, the lone Dad at the table confesses. That’s OK, people can see how you really feel, the worried Mom reassures him. There is another hearing on the resolution next week. A Mother who didn’t make it to the last one says she will go. This is a toothless state resolution, but, for right now, it’s our group’s best chance to work towards bringing the troops home.

We wonder about the value of our actions. What shows we are for the military, but against this war? Do more people think about the war because we hold signs reading “Bring the Troops home” on street corners? Does writing to our senators change their minds? Did marching for peace in Washington, DC, alter the national policy? Did it do any good to speak at the hearing? These actions feel worthwhile, but, we agonize about their effectiveness.

The conversation veers off the topic of the hearing and we eat some cookies. A Mom whose son is in Baghdad says she can’t sleep at night unless she takes a sleeping pill and a shot of whiskey. Another wonders if she will ever be “herself” again. She thinks she will calm down, but never be the same as before her son went to war. The Mother whose son will be going to Iraq for the third time says she worries about him every minute of the day. I tell the group my son is talking about making the military his career, dashing my hopes of only having to worry about his survival for a finite time. The Dad in the group takes another cookie off the plate. His wife didn’t come today because sometimes it’s just too hard to think about this kind of stuff all the time. She’s gone to a baby shower instead. We all understand. Their son is due to deploy to Iraq next month. The training he was supposed to get before deploying has been cut short so he can be part of the surge. My wife can’t eat these days, he says, and I can’t stop.

Newspaper stories about soldiers’ funerals really get me going, one Mother says. Another Mom nods. A third reports her son has asked for a basic military funeral if he is killed. Don’t, he insisted, have an expensive funeral. I speculate that my son would want a military funeral, but, I could not tolerate being handed a flag in exchange for his life. The Mom, whose son has given her his final instructions, describes the fear, more vivid than any funeral she can imagine, of two men in uniforms coming to her door to notify her that he has died.

What does the grave marker say if you are buried in a military cemetery, someone asks? The War in Iraq? Iraqi Freedom? One Mom thinks the markers read — The Global War on Terror. We all sit back and think about that. The idea of slogans being attached to our sons in life or death is hard to take. Can you be buried in a military cemetery without that kind of marker, a Mom muses? None of us think so. The Dad at the table tells us his 18 year old son is bringing home his will.

The afternoon winds down and we end up talking about houses. Three of the five of us live in houses too big for us, now that our kids are grown. We’ve thought of moving to smaller places but we all agree we will be staying put. No one even needs to say it. Everyone is having the same thought. If our sons come back wounded, we want them to return to the rooms the remember.

We pack up the left over cookies and put away the table and chairs. We say good-bye to each other and head out the door to our cars. They are plastered with bumper stickers saying our boys are in the military and we want them to come home.

Suzi SM