I have watched a lot of television since Thomas died, mostly stuff that everyone else watches (CSIs of various stripes, Law & Orders of various stripes, and a bunch of other crime shows). But last Friday evening there was not much on broadcast channels and I was not feeling like reading so I started channel surfing (Thomas was not really a channel surfer in my memory, despite the availability of the remote). In the course of this I found the Style channel and a program called "Clean House" in which the owner of said house calls this crew in to help get a grip on the clutter. This particular program was about a guy who had lived with his mother until her death two years earlier: he inherited the house and then just didn't change anything or apparently throw anything away and now he was getting married to someone who had similar issues. The resulting mess was breathtaking (literally I suspect for those allergic to dust).

The point of this is this poor man had never been able to give away any of his mother's things. He had a room devoted to her (it had been her office in life), including her clothing. He clearly had been very attached to his mother. I have a portable closet in my basement with Thomas's civilian clothing about which I feel the same way. But watching this man finally allow himself to be convinced that it was time to let Mother's clothing go, to save a few things (a craft project and her typewriter) as reminders: well, I think I'm inspired a bit. It was pretty clear that this lesson applies to me too. There are things I am not going to get rid of ever (let his surviving siblings figure out what to do with the correspondence from others and the various souvenirs he had picked up when I'm gone) but the clothing: it is time to let it go.

This is the fifth anniversary of Thomas's death. We plan to go to Mass in about an hour, then visit the cemetery this afternoon. Unfortunately it is raining here, the remnants of tropical storm Ida apparently, so this will involve old shoes and not much lingering.



Louise Penny invited me to write her blog entry for today which is an act of incredible generosity for such an accomplished writer whose name is beginning to be very well known indeed (New York Times bestseller list!). The address is http://www.louisepenny.blogspot.com/ I wrote this time about Thomas, rather than our grieving.



And one more thing. It will be announced today by the Montgomery County Executive's office: Ike Leggett has decided to name the Rockville Library the Rockville Memorial Library! After years of campaigning for this, it is going to happen. We are very grateful for this as well. When they put out their press release, I will post a link here.

The anniversaries are kind of strange days I've realized. In other years, I've mourned as we approached the day. This year, the week before was so emotionally difficult because of the Fort Hood events, and also suspecting that something was to be announced at the reception last night with the County Exec. It's just that you reach this point and in fact, the day is easier than expected because you've done so much of the work already. So for this day, my family will gather with a few friends, we will remember Thomas, we will eat and drink, we will celebrate the new life coming --Thomas's older sister Anna is expecting a baby in May. Our happiness will always have a small catch but that is OK.

It has been a difficult couple of days. Yesterday, a soldier opened fire at Ft. Hood and killed 13 people for reasons no one can figure out. This morning, the mosque he had attended here in Silver Spring was surrounded by television trucks (it's on the way to my youngest child's school). I don't deal well with the deaths of soldiers, and in these circumstances particularly it is difficult, someone who should have been protecting those lives stealing them away instead.

It's the first of November, All Saints' Day. We are getting closer to Thomas's anniversary and it is hard. Seven, and now eight, members of the Stryker Brigade in Afghanistan died this past week as the result of an IED. One of our fellow campaigners for the Rockville Memorial Library gave birth to a baby boy this week. She posted a picture on her Facebook page of the baby in his car seat next to his father's headstone in Arlington--it seems our hearts should break.

And then this afternoon in the grocery store, I was stopped by a woman who remembered me from our kids' early school days. Her son and Thomas had been part of a newspaper club together in elementary school but she remembered not only Thomas, but the rest of my kids as well, and asked about each of them. It was astounding and touching. But what was even more surprising was discovering that she knows one of the other Montgomery County families of the fallen involved in the library issue. Connections . . .

I feel awful. This is basically an emotional hangover, not swine flu or a more conventional hangover. Yesterday, I was part of a panel that spoke to Maryland mental health professionals who want to work with returning veterans and their families and even though I feel it went well, it is still very, very draining. I kept thinking of the things I should have said *too* though thankfully I have not thought of anything I should definitely *not* have said. We laughed, we cried. I tried to be honest, and I tried to be a little funny because I think that Thomas would have much preferred it that way. It was not about Thomas anyway, it was about the rest of us and our survival.

After I left the seminar (we were the last session) and also left the discussion after the session where I got to hear a couple of stories of the people in front of me, also heartrending, I moved my car a couple of blocks and went to a restaurant across from the Regal theatres and had a glass of wine and some of the most deadly potato chips I've ever seen. They featured blue cheese and maybe sour cream and chives . . . the wine was a little more conventional. Then I walked around the Rockville Public Library (someday it will be Memorial) for about 45 minutes, checked out a book, and then left to go to the MCCPTA Legislative dinner, a couple of miles north.

I was still wearing my Gold Star Banner pin on my lapel--for some reason I was inordinately proud of my new clothes, including a nice jacket that let that pin shine out--and got to answer questions about what it meant. I don't often wear anything that overtly says "I am a Gold Star Mother" because for one thing, a lot of people have no idea of the significance of the Gold Star. Last night, it seemed to be right and appropriate to begin the education of those who were lucky enough to not know. I think I did it gently, but today I am as exhausted as if I had run a marathon.

I'm thinking that I will be shifting the focus of this blog very soon from so much reminiscing (which I think becomes a little less interesting as we get further away in time from Thomas's death) to more comment on our current situation. I started writing this in June of 2006 and I am now nearly at the end of 2005 in my writing. In fact, I can pretty much tell you that the rest of 2005 was unremarkable and move on from there! When I look at my calendar, I see a bunch of doctor appointments for various family members including my mother-in-law, husband and myself. Exciting stuff. I will check out the 2006 calendar next time and go on from there.

The Weekend of Remembrance activities were really very nicely done. The dinner on Friday night, the 25th of September, was actually tasty and the speakers and entertainment were great. The blue-frosting cupcakes, I'd recommend skipping. We had assigned tables and our tablemates were a family from Connecticut who had lost their son, a Marine corporal, on August 25, 2006. They were accompanied by friends and in fact the program kept the noise level low enough for us all to have a real conversation. Jordan is buried in Section 60. The actual Time of Remembrance ceremony was on Saturday at noon on the west lawn of the Capitol which was lovely and much easier to get to than the Washington Monument grounds they have used in previous years. As in earlier years, there were short speeches, including one by Kevin Bacon which was very gracious (clearly an outgrowth of his role in "Taking Chance") and various military folks and members of the White House Commission on Remembrance, and H. Ross Perot who is a very generous man and enthusiastic, shall we say? The president sent a letter, read by a member of the Commission. The rain held off until the picnic began afterwards but there were tents. We again ran into our Friday evening tablemates who seemed a bit more relaxed (rain will do that for you) and were enjoying the events. I have their card--e-mail is a wonderful thing.

Dinner and the picnic were organized and funded by Families United. I am very grateful to them for doing this.

The card idea is one that I roll around in my head but keep failing to act on. It would be handy to have these because frankly we are involved at least on the periphery in a number of causes having to do with the fallen and it would be a lot handier to have a business card than to keep writing our e-mail incomprehensibly on the back of scrap pieces of paper. It may become especially convenient now as two things have developed (or continued developing) recently: first, our ongoing struggle with Montgomery County Maryland on the issue of the Rockville Memorial Library (no, we don't want a rock in Veterans' Park which is a wide spot in the median of Rockville Pike and has no safe access by foot nor designated parking; we also are not keen on the "temporary eternal flame" they offered as part of the Veteran's Day celebration which they are trying to keep "low-key"). Second, it appears that there is no appropriation for the White House Commission on Remembrance in the budget that was presented to Congress. This too is a low-cost item which generates a certain amount of goodwill. Letting it expire seems foolish. Ahem.

So there we are. We are approaching the five year anniversary of Thomas's death and I'm seeing some consequences, things that keep bubbling to the surface. Over these years we've resolved some things, but clearly there is a lot left to deal with (including my propensity for ending sentences with prepositions).

I have been neglecting this, life having once again overtaken me. My mother-in-law, Thomas's grandma, will be moving in with us at the end of this week and the preparations for that have been trying, I went to Europe for nine days because an opportunity arose and, if there is one thing that 2004 taught me, it is that life is terribly uncertain so take advantage when you can; and I've been busy trying to do my last year of PTA activities. This coming weekend is also the White House Commission on Remembrance's annual event: this year it is a Weekend of Remembrance, and it will include a dinner and a picnic. I think it will be good, but I am also thinking it will be sad. I said goodby to Thomas at just this time of year, saw him for the last time on October 3rd, 2004, and it all just seems a little too real today.

*****
Thinking back to that first anniversary weekend (and looking at my calendar!), I see that was when I participated in the race with Julie Werner (described very early in this blog). We did dinner with the guys and then at the end of the weekend sent them back to Fort Lewis. That following week I see that they started on my kitchen and I worked several times. A friend took me to see Porgy and Bess at the Kennedy Center. We received a number of cards and letters around the date, including one from a friend of my nephew in Sacramento who had been touched by Thomas's story and arranged for a Mass for him in the cathedral there.

Because of the kitchen work, we ended up having Thanksgiving in my mother-in-law's petite apartment. No matter how cramped it was, it was definitely better than that first Thanksgiving in the restaurant had been. No one got sick and we all fit in reasonably well, even Gene in his wheelchair.