May sucks

I am not an angry person. It has not been a common emotion for me, although I've passed by it and through it in the last 2 years. Recently my state of mind has been sadness, the deepest of grief, and an anguish I never knew before May 2004.

I said I was angry on Mother’s Day and this anger is not going away. It's parked in my heart, the engine is revving. It’s different, too, this time; it is a raging anger towards the administration, people who don’t care or even think about this effing war and the fact that my only child came home in a flag covered box and finally anyone who is dumb enough to cross me. And I just miss Ken so much. What do you do with this kind of rage?

The day I was told that Ken was killed I vowed I would fight for everything that he had earned, every honor and every dignity. I have had no fear when it came to fighting for what was right for Ken and other military families. I have told anyone who I have dealt with, their rank or title did not impress me; I only wanted the truth. It was the right thing to do. Through all of that, my anger was contained and controlled.

There's a dirty secret that no one talks about that most Gold Star moms are at an age approaching or well into the “change of life”. Hormones are misbehaving, depression comes and goes, moods are swinging and thinking might be fuzzy. We don’t know if what we are feeling is hormones or grief. If we could control one or the other, maybe we could *know* what we are feeling instead of feeling everything at once. It’s just so damned unfair.

I am also feeling fragile these days. Fragility plus anger doesn’t compute; they seem diametrically opposed. I AM NOT A FRAGILE PERSON! One second, I feel as if I will dissolve in the ocean of tears that just won’t stop, and the next second, I could push the same ocean back.

May has been a milestone month in Ken’s and my life. Back in 1978, when Ken was 10 months old, I left my marriage behind in New York on Memorial Day as we headed back to California. Fast forward to May 2002, Ken graduated from college and was commissioned as a 2nd Lt in the Army. In May 2003, he left for Iraq and in May 2004, Ken was the 100th soldier from California to be killed in this hideous war.

May sucks.