A Can't Think Straight Day

A Can’t Think Straight Day---
June 4, 2002

I have spent the last 10mins. reading all the entries in the roundtable section and I had a bunch of answers and comments to respond but I am so numb and exhausted I can't do it. I slept 6 hours straight last night. That's a good night for me but I am exhausted.
Pakistan and India are possibly going to war. They both have nuclear capabilities. Afghanistan lies directly between them and today my youngest son left his family for Army boot camp. I have a weight in the middle of my chest and I can't lift it. It is called fear and I don't dare acknowledge it because if I do I will panic. I am on the brink of tears and I don't dare cry because if I start I am afraid I will not stop. I know he is safe in the US until probably around the end of the year maybe even longer. Then what? I am not a brave mother. I am Mothermouse. I have always been the mother, little but here and there, everywhere for my brood, all of them almost always. I have been always the one they turn to for strength, for love, for guidance. I have not always been good at this. I have made so many mistakes but I have been lucky. They have managed to come out ok and to do good. They have managed to see that I love them and have tried to do better. I have managed to become old and be loved by my children and grandchildren. But now I am afraid and there is nothing I can do but pray. I am too numb to do much more than say, "God, please keep him safe." I know I have nothing to worry about until after boot camp and after tech school. But what then? I know You are stronger and bigger than war. You can keep him safe but I am afraid. My heart breaks for all of my children and their sorrows, pains and hurts but this one has put himself in harm's way. I must ask You to keep harm out of his way. I am not brave like him. He will do whatever it takes to do his duty for his country and for what is right and to be able to support his family. My heart breaks for the times he will miss them, for his children who will want Daddy and Daddy won't be there, for his wife who will have many lonely moments without him and for the times she will live in fear for him, and I with her, and for the times he might live in fear. I am sitting here wondering what am I doing at this silly screen pouring the last of my strength out through a keyboard today, but I fear if I don't find someway to get some of this out of me, my heart will rip and explode and I won't make it through the day, let alone the next 3 or 4 years. I know that later today I must call his wife and see if she is okay, but I don't know if I can lift the phone and talk to her without breaking up. I must be strong to try and help her. She has 3 young children to get through this with. There is a storm building outside. It is getting very gray and cloudy. I can feel the rain drawing near and I think thunder and lightening will come with it. I have always been able to sense a building storm sometimes long before I actually knew one was coming. I have been feeling this one since last night. It's not too far off now and maybe in a couple of hours. Maybe if I sleep until then. When the storm breaks maybe I will be calmer. Maybe then I can be Mothermouse keeper of the brood but just now I am not brave. I am just a hurting mother and a mouse trying to hide from this thing that won't go away and I wonder how my great grandmother saw her sons in the first war go away. I wonder how my grandmother watched her own sons go to war during the second war and then into Korea. They were such strong women who survived so much. I hope I am like them enough now. I have been told I am very much like they were. I wonder, but right now I only know I am numb and so tired----