The death of loved ones is always painful and, it seems to me, the death of your child is particularly painful because, as my father said to me after my brother died, it seems to violate the natural order of things. The power of such a loss is driven home by today’s #stampoftheday, which honors “Gold Star Mothers,” those women who lost a son or daughter in wartime while their child was serving in U.S. Armed Forces. The 3-cent stamp was issued on September 21, 1948, a few years after the end of World War II.
The Gold Star Mothers was founded after World War I by Grace Darling Seibold, whose son George had died in the war. After the US entered the war in 1917, he had volunteered, requesting assignment in aviation. He was sent to Canada where he learned to fly British planes since the United States had neither an air force nor planes. Deployed to England, he was assigned to a squadron that fighting in France. While he was at war, his mother began to volunteer in military hospitals.
In the summer of 1918, Grace stopped receiving letters from George and in the fall his family learned that he was missing and later that he was dead. Convinced that self-contained grief is self-destructive, Grace devoted her time and efforts not only to working in the hospital but also to supporting other mothers whose sons had lost their lives in military service. She organized a group consisting solely of these mothers, with the purpose of not only comforting each other, but giving loving care to hospitalized veterans. The organization was named after the Gold Stars that families hung in their windows in honor of the deceased veteran. Originally open only to mothers of those who died in World War I, the organization expanded to include those who lost children in subsequent wars. And while the organization was for decades open only to U.S. citizens, after an outcry in the early 2000s it changed it criteria to include non-citizens who children died while serving in the US armed forces.
As I pondered what it means to lose a child who was fighting in a war, I remembered that sometime after 9/11, I read the L.M. Montgomery’s “Rilla of Ingleside,” aloud to one of my then-young daughters. (We were in that magical time when your children let you read to them and you’re reading engaging books with plots and characters). The book is the last in the series that began with the much better-known “Anne of Green Gables.” By the time of “Rilla,” Anne is in her late 40s and has three sons who all go off to war. Rilla, the book’s namesake, is an irrepressible almost-15-year-old, who grows up over the course of the book. The book is the only Canadian novel written from a woman’s perspective about the First World War by a contemporary. And reading it to my daughter at a time that the US was descending into the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was a sobering experience, particularly because Walter, one of Anne’s sons dies.
In particularly poignant scene, Rilla goes off to read the last letter he wrote before he was killed. (On their own, the words that follow seem a bit hackneyed, but I assure you that carry great weight when you’ve been immersed in the world of early 20th century PEI for several months.). Rilla opens the letter and reads the following:
“Is there laughter in your face yet, Rilla? I hope so. The world will need laughter and courage more than ever in the years that will come next. I don’t want to preach-this isn’t any time for it. But I just want to say something that may help you over the worst when you hear that I’ve gone ‘west.’ I’ve a premonition about you, Rilla, as well as about myself. I think Ken [Rilla’s sweetheart, who also was serving] will go back to you-and that there are long years of happiness for you by-and-by. And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for-teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid for it will have been given for naught. This will be part of your work, Rilla. And if you-all you girls back in the homeland-do it, then we who don’t come back will know that you have not ‘broken faith’ with us.”
Montgomery continued: “Rilla read her letter over many times. There was a new light on her pale young face when she finally stood up, amid the asters Walter had loved, with the sunshine of autumn around her. For the moment at least, she was lifted above pain and loneliness. ‘I will keep faith, Walter,’ she said steadily. ‘I will work-and teach-and learn-and laugh, yes, I will even laugh-through all my years, because of you and because of what you gave when you followed the call.'”
We are not, officially, engaged in a massive military campaign, like either World War, that is taking thousands of lives. But we are in the midst of a pandemic that has already taken 200,000 lives in the US and at least a million around the world. And just as feckless leaders caused many to die in those wars, irresponsible ones are failing us today. In these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when, as I noted yesterday, remembering is such an important theme, I honor all Gold Star parents, mothers and fathers, who have lost children before their time.
Be well, stay safe, keep faith, laugh, fight for justice and work for peace.