Posted on: Tuesday, December 28, 2004

ABOUT WOMEN
What is the lesson of death?

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Relationships Writer

The best man in my wedding died in a plane crash last month on a snow-covered mountain in Afghanistan.

Three men in my husband's Army unit and three civilian crewmen died that day in the crash.

Someday, I will remember what it's like not to think about it every few minutes, but I don't know when that will be.

I keep pulling out the last letter I received from my husband and looking at the words Travis Grogan scribbled in the margin, telling me hello.

I can still picture Travis sitting in his living room watching NASCAR when he was home on leave in July. He had shaved his head and grown a mustache, a symbol of camaraderie he shared with my husband and other pilots in their troop.

My mind keeps flashing vivid images of him: swimming with his kids, riding a catamaran with his wife, playing horseshoes with the guys, helping me move, dancing at my wedding.

He was 31 and had a happy life.

Then my mind fast forwards to a time when my husband and I will stand before a wall, like the Vietnam Memorial for our generation, running our fingers across the name Travis W. Grogan and others we know who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I haven't found the right words to say to his wife and the others who lost loved ones last month in that crash.

But in a weird way, it's brought me closer to my own family, especially my in-laws. My father-in-law, a Vietnam vet, held my hand when I saw him a few weeks ago, and told me everything was going to be OK. And my mother-in-law has shared her experiences of what it was like when she lost close friends in wartime.

I know my husband and his buddies will "soldier on." That's what they're taught to do, and they've already started doing that. I just hope they'll be all right when they get home.

I feel selfish even worrying about that when other people's loved ones won't be coming back. It's a warped sense of relief that it wasn't my husband in harm's way, mixed with a heightened sense of anxiety.

As bad as it feels for me to lose someone who was like a brother to my husband, I know how much worse it must be for those feeling a deeper loss.

To think thousands of people across the country are feeling this way breaks my heart.

This is what war costs.

I keep wondering what the lesson is in good people dying before their time in accidents and because of conflict.

Is it to remind the rest of us that life is fragile? That we should appreciate every day? That peace would really be a miracle?

Someday, I hope to learn the answer. But I don't know when that will be.

Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships. Reach her at tleach@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.