[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 68 (Friday, May 26, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            FALLEN SOLDIERS' MOTHERS ARE ALSO WAR CASUALTIES

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. CHARLES A. GONZALEZ

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 25, 2006

  Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share a moving article 
published on Mother's Day in the San Antonio Express-News. Since this 
piece speaks eloquently for itself, I see no reason to add any extra 
words.

            Fallen Soldiers' Mothers are Also War Casualties

                        (By Mary Alice Altorfer)

       ``Mama, Mama,'' is the universal cry of the dying in 
     battle. Men maimed and broken scream for their mothers, who 
     mercifully can't hear them.
       Posthumous medals for valor muffle the child and honor the 
     warrior, but for a Gold Star Mother, ribbons and ceremony are 
     as short-lived as the cherished remains being buried. Without 
     being a statistic, she, too, is a casualty of war. Heard in 
     her strangled weeping are guttural pleas to God to ease the 
     pain of losing a child. For this heartbroken woman, a coffin, 
     even one draped in the American flag and carried by white-
     gloved Marines, is the grim totality of her forced enlistment 
     into a war that breached the refuge of home.
       The bomb in this woman's living room is the conspicuous 
     absence of her baby. Yes, baby, because no matter how old or 
     how long deceased, the person for whom taps sounded only 
     sleeps in his mother's heart, naptime being eternity.
       Mother's Day becomes a sad reminder and an accolade for her 
     supreme contribution to patriotism. Or maybe it's a time to 
     be angry and resentful--why my son or daughter? Pride 
     crumples in a darkened room filled with pictures of a young 
     man or woman whose potential bled out onto a foreign soil.
       This imagined scenario is a relentless assault on memories 
     of all the boo-boos she kissed and Superman Band-Aids 
     plastered on scraped knees and dinged elbows. If only Mama 
     could have been there to fix things, to make them better, to 
     chase the monster away, to kiss away hurts one more time, 
     then maybe she, too, could quit crying.
       Questions and accusations stifle remorse, but tears like 
     water, ever the enemy of rock, wear down resistance. Solace 
     wrestles with acceptance, but grief takes on a presence of 
     its own. Guided by ghosts, it is either torment or release 
     from them.
       When burying a child, remembrance is love and guilt is 
     debilitating; however, my quantifying and simplifying a 
     mother's loss and angst seems as unsentimental as some pot-
     bellied politician pontificating on Memorial Day. How can 
     anyone suppose a wound so deep it bleeds concurrently with 
     every thought of the initial one? Such trauma is personal, 
     so much so that empathy even seems contrived.
       In the middle of the night, this woman still awakens to the 
     imagined cries of her baby, only to clutch a pillow instead. 
     Holidays are a poignant reminder of her diminished family, 
     her unwitting contribution to a distant conflict that ignored 
     every mother's boundaries and ended innocence as abruptly as 
     the life she mourns. Her naivete is six feet under, too. The 
     flag so gloriously waving in front of her home also casts a 
     shadow.
       This Mother's Day, there are women embracing memories 
     rather than their children. These mothers fully understand 
     the costs of war and wonder if the old generals and 
     politicians who enact them ever walk in a military cemetery 
     and sob aloud? Do their sons and daughters wear our country's 
     uniform and see active duty?
       Do beribboned chests ever exhale and tremble at the sight 
     of an old woman kneeling at Arlington, her fingers lovingly 
     touching a carved name as if it were warm and whispering back 
     to her?
       Maybe it is; maybe that's why her face is pressed against 
     the stone so she can once again hear, ``Mama, Mama.''

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