A friend recently showed me a news item from Daily News Transcript: “Selectmen call coffin display ‘insensitive.’” For those not familiar with the event, on June 21, a community organization held a ‘Tribute to U.S. Military Killed in Iraq’ on the Walpole town common in which bracelets were displayed with the name of each member of the US military killed in Iraq. I understand from the article, boxes were also decorated in black cloth to resemble coffins. Chairwoman of the Selectman, Cathie Winston, said the display would “only heighten the anxieties and fears of those residents with friends and family currently serving in the military.”
As the mother of an army reservist who has served one year in Iraq and who will soon leave for another yearlong deployment in Afghanistan, I would like to disagree. I live with the knowledge of what my son’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan means every minute of the day. What is appalling to me is that the American people seem to want to forget this terrible war and the price we have all paid for it in life and treasure.
Coffins and memorials to those who have died, who will never return to family and friends, are not insensitive; they are reminders that we are all involved in this tragedy. Every family I know who has lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan is disgusted by the executive order that does not allow a flag draped coffin to be shown on the news. I know a mother who was told to wait until after sundown to receive the body of her beloved son because coffins of dead soldiers may not be off loaded from planes until it is dark.
Wake up America! There is a war going on and we who shoulder it know what a coffin looks like.
