Families of the War-Occupied

I found it tough to get into a holiday mood today, largely because I thought not only of those who have died in the past two years between Iraq and Afghanistan, but also their families. For many of them, this certainly was not a day of celebration, of potato salad, or fireworks.

I was not born for well more than a decade past the end of WWII, but I remember well how vividly my mother spoke of those years in which my father was gone in service. With three small children at home and she herself barely more than past her teens, it was a nightmare time of near poverty, fear for her husband, fear of having to raise her kids by herself. He returned after we bombed Japan, he one of the first troops on the island after the devastation we wrought. And he returned with nightmares and devastating health problems, including malaria which would recur again and again until his death twenty years later (just shy of his 40th birthday).

While neither of my parents were anti-war, my own feelings against it were borne of their stories - hers at home and his in the Pacific theatre. Thus, while I can't pretend to know what it's like to have a spouse at war, I know what it meant to my family, and imagined often what it was like for the families on the other side of the conflict.