The Home Front - Military Times

Memorial Day isn’t only about those who lost their lives in war

Joe Watson, a handsome, young sailor in summer whites, is no stranger to my kitchen.

Despite moves to eight different homes in the last 20 years, the image of this sailor fresh out of boot camp, embracing his mother with a monstruous smile on his face, hasn’t missed a single day adorning the front of our refrigerator.

Over those years, written messages courtesy of my sons and artwork the preschool “Picassos” my daycare kids create with crayons and finger paints - roughly sketched dinosaurs, landscapes of Mars, painstakingly created “Miss Debi” caricatures in varying hues of green, red and blue - have occasionally shrouded this image captured on Kodak paper of one of the dearest Navy friends I’ve ever had.

If it isn’t me, it’s Lance, one of my sons, who very carefully goes about the task of moving the drawings aside, re-positioning a conglomeration of refrigerator magnets so that Joe’s picture continues to remain in full view.

Lance knows how important that picture is, freezing forever a precious moment in time between a mother and son in Orlando, Florida. A picture Joe’s mother sent us six weeks after his death begging us not to forget her son.

EWSN Joseph Watson lost his life on the USS Stark FFG-31 in the Persian Gulf on May 17, 1987. Two Exocet missiles from an Iraqi figher jet hit the Stark, killing him and 36 of his shipmates. There was no time for goodbyes. No time for final embraces. No priceless moments set aside for words that needed to be said before mothers and fathers buried their sons across America soon after Mother’s Day that year.

In one, swift, decisive moment, these sailors were simply…gone.

Keeping that photo of Joe in a place where we and those who enter our home are sure to see it has been extremely important to me. The instant a visitor asks, “Who’s the Navy guy on your refrigerator?” it’s a new opportunity for me to affectionately reminisce about a 24-year-old sailor from Michigan killed in a far off place and time and yet still manages to draw breath everyday since that tragedy through our own constant remembrance of him.

A sailor I’ve had numerous re-occurring dreams of over the years, sitting on a park bench beside me saying, “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m right here with you and always will be, Deb, as long as you still remember.”

Remember? How in the world could I ever forget?

The morning of October 12, 2000, I was busy tending to diaper changes and refereeing, “He hit me first!” tussles between the military children I provide daycare for, completely unaware that half a world away the lives of 17 sailors had been suddenly taken in a bomb attack on the USS Cole DDG-67. A friend who works at one of the local shipyards called that morning and said, “Put the news on. We just got word here in the office that one of our ships has been hit.”

At first, I was stunned. Totally shocked speechless. Immediately after the CNN broadcast I tuned into, I sat with several of my active duty daycare mothers and we wept together. It was, in many respects, the Stark tragedy revisited for me, thirteen years later.

Watching days later the Honor Guard ceremony televised live from Germany when the bodies of five of the sailors killed on the Cole were on their way home, I couldn’t begin to comprehend how anyone ever finds the strength to bury those whose lives have been stolen by such senseless acts of terrorism.

But what about the loss of so many other lives, those who never had the chance to fulfill their dreams of serving their country, the ones who were on active duty and lost their lives in fatal accidents or as victims of crime?

For instance, Adam Lee Hall, a second class petty officer who was assigned to the USS Carl Vinson CVN-70, shot and killed in his apartment a year ago less than three miles from where I live in Norfolk. His killer has yet to be brought to justice. Somehow Hall’s mother, the family and friends of this young sailor have been able to courageously put one foot in front of the other and continue living. Somehow they deal with the lack of closure where Adam’s death is concerned, their own intense grief on a daily basis.

These are the ones who also deserve just as much remembrance on Memorial Day - from all branches of the armed forces - each and every one of them.

Over the years, I’ve deeply regretted words I never had the chance to say to Joe, the long-distance messages he left on our answering machine that year which tragically went unreturned because we were too busy, too seemingly caught up with the details of everyday life.

The last letter he wrote us just weeks prior to his death with a cute, little drawing of himself inserted into it as “Joe Squid” clinging to the string of a balloon that read: “I love the Navy,” a letter we neglected to respond to - until it was too late.

This negligence on my part to remember deployment isn’t always just-another uneventful “Med run”, falling into the trap of the sweetest of false lullabyes, “we can always catch up with each other later, when there’s more time” is a private hell filled with regret I know I will suffer for the rest of my life.

Military personnel put themselves in harm’s way constantly. We, as family members and those closely connected with the military, grapple with and in some fashion or another, understand or at the very least, strive to achieve our own sense of acceptance of this harsh fact of military life all the time.

Still, tragically, it seems to take a serious reality check such as the attack on the Stark or the Cole, the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, a fatal accident or a crime committed for us to fully appreciate how servicemembers courageously allow themselves to be at risk in the line of duty, and at times, lose their lives in the process.

Just as tragically, we often leave “for another day” those words and gestures, expressions of faith, gratitude and love that should never, ever be set aside for some other time when we think we’ll have the time.

When is that time? Ask those who grieve the loss of their loved ones in uniform this Memorial Day. They know there isn’t one, any more.

If someone out there needs to hear from you, pick up the phone. Make that call. Not tomorrow, not next week. Log off your computer and place that call right now.

If you’ve hurt someone who needs to hear you say, “I’m sorry,” get those words said. It doesn’t matter whether that apology is accepted or not. You’ll know in your heart you did the right thing.

If you’ve shunned someone in your neighborhood, work center or social group because of cultural, moral or other differences, reach beyond those differences. Bring that individual back into your “military family” you are so proud to be a part of. Welcome and accept them. They need you.

If you’ve lost touch with a family member or a very close friend, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by contacting them simply to say, “I miss you.” Forget what caused you to grow apart. Let this moment be the only meaningful one - the moment that brings you back together.

And military members, tell your spouses, your significant others, your children, how much you treasure and appreciate them every chance you get. Loved ones, do the same. You couldn’t possibly say those three words, “I love you,” enough.

All we really have, when you think about it, is this moment to seize and embrace. Don’t waste it. Cherish it. Make the most of it. Some of us foolishly squandered that moment and will spend the rest of our lives paying a very high and painful price for it.

Learn from us and our own tragic mistakes. That tomorrow you look to and rely on to be there for you may not ever come.

As Harriet Beecher Stowe said, “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” Don’t let that statement define you or your regret this Memorial Day.

I know I won’t - ever again.

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