The 'Original' Elizabeth Edwards' Blog

War – UGHH! – What is it Good For?? Absolutely Nothing!!

26 Jul 2009 Leave a Comment

by Elizabeth Edwards in When Jacob Comes Marching Home Again...Hoorah! Hoorah! Tags: US Army, War

Kyle Jacob is about to spread his wings and fly right into Fort Wood, MO for basic training.  I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that my son, who was brought up in a very spiritual home, wasn’t raised to be ‘macho’, was raised to think with his head, not with his fists, and was the cuddliest thing ever is going to become, and I quote his exact words, ‘A Combat Engineer’ – Hooah!!

You know I had to call the Army and ask them just exactly what a combat engineer does.  All kinds of things, like carry explosives, serve on the front line.  My heart dropped to my feet…my son wants to carry explosives and serve in the front line?  This is such a challenge in my life, not just because he is MY son going, but because I AM SO AGAINST WAR AND ANYONE’S SON OR DAUGHTER GOING RIGHT NOW!!

There are a few days that stand out in my memory of when my son’s world changed and I knew it could never change back.  Once, when I took him to see an Eddie Murphy movie at age 5 and he was sitting on my lap, and Eddie said the dreaded ‘N’ word.  I was so shocked, so appalled, that I gathered up my son and walked out of the Theatre.  I never expected him to hear that word, ever!

The very first time I knew it would change and never go back to what it was happened when I finally asked his father to leave, because I could not deal with the way that he treated me, and I did not want my son to grow up with a negative perception about his father.  The very next day after his father moved out, my son wanted to go find him in the town he had moved to.  It broke my heart to see him torn, and to know his world would change forever.

The third time my son’s world came crashing down was 9/11.  I was working a sales job where we have conference calls at home in the morning before I took my son to school, and when I got on the phone, everyone kept saying, ‘Did you see it?  Turn on your tv!’  I turned it on, horrified at what I saw.  I had to drop my son off at school that day and send him in like it was a regular day.  My son would look up in the air at every single airplane that he heard in the sky for about a year.

Now he is going off to ‘fight’.  He hasn’t spoken to me in a few years, because I went through some challenging times where I lost everything – our apartment, my car, both my jobs, my foot was broken, he was having difficulties in school with other boys fighting with him, and I didn’t want him to go down the drain, so I sent him to live with his father until the end of the year.  I sent him in March, and in June, I found out that his father had told the Courts that I gave up custody and he had stopped child support.  I snowballed quickly, as can happen in life, and had to live in transitional living for awhile, which was such a stretch for me, as I have always been a rather naive and squeaky clean individual.

These past five years, in fact, ever since I gave birth to my son, he has been my guiding light, my mainstay – the reason I keep going and trying to get to a better place.  I promised that I would stay no matter how difficult it was until he was 18 and on his own.  It was his place to leave me, not mine to leave him.  And I went through some difficult times, but I always thought that the love we had between us as Mother and Son would shine through, and I always told him that my love was big enough for both of us then.  Now, I am having to take something to help me sleep at night and if I get through a night where I don’t cry myself to sleep, that is a good night!

I am learning more and more the immense call to love that God requests from each and every one of us.  We all have different reasons for being on this Earth at this time.  I am really pondering mine these days.  I have lost half of my family by the age of 23, went through two divorces, and now – to have my son go off to the USArmy, my only child, and not be able to talk with him or say good bye to him first is the hardest challenge I have had to face so far.

When my Mother died when I was just eight years old, I somehow knew she wouldn’t be with me forever.  When my brother shot himself in the head accidentally and he had to learn how to walk and talk all over again, I was devastated.  When my darling sister, Cynthia Louise died on the 4th of July weekend when she was just 21, I was beside myself with pain, and then when my father, who had raised me from age eight, passed just two years later, I felt like an orphan, and thought I would never get over the pain.

I don’t believe the saying, ‘Time changes everything and heals all wounds”.  I will always miss my Mother and wonder what truly happened to her.  I will always wish I would have had parents around to help me understand the complexities of raising a child, but I have come to terms with their passings.  I also have come to terms with the fact that I will more than likely watch my older brother and sister pass as well, and be the lone ranger of my generation, just as my Aunt Judy in Missouri is.

Life is so very different than I thought it would be back in the backyard at 2903 Hayden Way in Boise, Idaho.  So very different.

“Please, God, protect this beautiful young man as he heads off to become a soldier for this Country.  Let him know that a soldier is always close to God, and help him to remember just how much his Mother does love him and is so very proud of him to make this walk.  Scared, yes.  As any Mother knows who loves her children, it isn’t your child that you do not trust, it is others in this World.  Help him to believe in kindness and justice, and remind him to think with his heart first, his head second, and his fists last, if at all possible.  And please, dear God, bring him home to me.  Keep my heart strong and my faith even stronger, for I am an old farm woman who likes to have her boy close to her.  Bless him in his walk, Dear Lord, and hold his hand all of the way.  Amen.”

I love you, Pv21B.

xoxo – Momsms