A Nation's Loss
Yesterday I featured John Romano's moving "A Story for Jake" about the toll of war on one family. Today I'm lauding "New Graves, Fresh Grief" by Darragh Johnson of The Washington Post. Through her portrait of Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery, Johnson shows us how people mourn American fatalities from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Powerful details help us picture the scene at the cemetery:
Visitors wear long sideburns and spiky hair, flip flops and eyelet skirts.
Even the names on the headstones sound youthful and vibrant: Megan, Jesse, Heath, Blake. They are names that seem better suited to text messaging -- LOL, BFF -- than to the abbreviated code of the graveyard -- CPL, BSM.
"I find a need to be there," says Teresa Arciola, who drives from New York's Westchester County every other month to place iPod earbuds on her son's grave and play for him the Temptations and Eminem. She brings him Black Forest gummy bears and, on his birthday, beer that she pours into the ground. At every visit, she sits on his grave and reads aloud from his favorite baby book, "Corduroy." He had just turned 20.