No one understands quite as much as another mother what it is like to have a child leave for a combat zone. No one knows what it is like to have a veteran return -- not quite the same. No one else hears the ring of the phone in quite the same way.
This Sunday, moms across the country will be treated to breakfast in bed, homemade cards, bouquets of flowers and fancy dinners in restaurants. But for those who have sons and daughters fighting wars overseas, Mother’s Day won’t be all roses.
The term "Military Mothers" describes two distinct groups of women. On the one hand, it describes mothers whose sons and daughters are members of the military. On the other, it describes mothers who are themselves members of the military.
Though many military mothers have grown used to their children’s absences on Mother’s Day and other special occasions, it doesn’t make those times any easier especially for moms whose sons and daughters are in the line of fire in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Mothers whose children are in the military and deployed to military bases around the world or serving in a war zone far from home, live with daily fear and worry for the lives of those to whom they gave birth, and nurtured into the fine young men and women they are. They worry that those children may return home with missing limbs or with PTSD, and may not be the same person who deployed, or that they may return in a flag-draped casket.
And mothers, who must leave their children behind to go to a war zone far from home, live with daily fear for their own lives because they worry about the possibility that their children may have to grow up without a mother. And they worry about the impact their absence will have on little psyches, and whether that impact will be lasting.
We assure you, both groups are heroes.
And we'd like to wish them, and all the other mothers out there, a Happy Mother's Day!
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