Funeral Blues

Governor Patterson has ordered that all state government buildings lower their flags to half staff today in honor of U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Alberto Francesconi of the Bronx, who was killed in Afghanistan on New Years Day.

While I applaud the Governor's actions and admit that this gesture has made him dearer to me, I first questioned; why this honor for this particular person? Other than having had the misfortune to die on the first day of a new year, his sacrifice isn't any different than that of those 4000 and counting who have perished in this war before him. On closer examination, I see the wisdom in the thought.

I look at this young man's boot camp graduation picture. He is extremely handsome and painfully young. He is (shockingly to my Peter Pan ego) young enough to be my son. In my living room and in my bedroom sit very similar pictures of another young man. It is my husband's boot camp photo. And I ask myself, what besides their resplendent youth in their beautiful dress blues, makes a kid from the Bronx and a farmer from Ohio so alike? Then the tragedy and the need for flag lowering come crashing home.

Look at either of these young men and you see such honor, decency, bravery, commitment. And that achingly beautiful cleanliness available only in the faces of very young and very idealistic men. You see in them every quality every father has ever hoped for in the men their daughters bring home. These young gods in their dress blues, so proud of having survived the crucible that is Parris Island which has distilled the very best within them; they stand so proud of having earned the brotherhood of the Corps.

Now look at the photo of the Corporal's widow. (Can a mere girl of 21 really be a widow? Is the universe really that perverse?) There but for the grace of god and 8 years of Clinton, go I. Call me the perpetrator of a gross oversimplification but the fact that she mourns and I do not is reason enough for me to be a Democrat. But I won't dirty this with politics-forgive that one lapse. The evil old men who wantonly send boys to die don't deserve a letter's worth of space that should be devoted to him and his memory.

But I must confess that I was never in any danger of being in her position because I have always lacked whatever gumption is necessary to have married or courted a man in imminent danger. Cowardice or self-preservation, either way, a person has to know their limits and sacrifice like hers is well beyond mine. So, I believe the flag is lowered for her too.

Now the real, visceral mourning begins because I get that what has been lost is exactly what I have been given. I met my husband after the service. I received all the benefits from what the Corps instilled in him with none of the sacrifice inherent in waiting at home. She will never know his children. She will never observe the subtle changes in his face that announce that the boy in the picture is no more (at least until he gets excited about some new toy or adventure and then the boy is resurrected). She will never have the pleasure of soothing him on cold mornings when his joints ache from the years of humping packs nor the laughter inherent in having to yell things over and over because he's half deaf from mortar fire. She will never have the joy, as do I, of living with a man for whom sacrifice is not just a word and who has offered himself up as the price of liberty. She will never know the great man this boy was likely to be, if my experience is any judge. I am grateful for my luck and ashamed at my relief that her suffering will never be mine. Because when the day comes that I am handed a flag from a grateful nation it will have been draped over the coffin of an old, old man whom I will have spent the better part of my life adoring. Unless I luckily and happily die first.

She has been robbed. We have been robbed. A whole generation has been robbed from us and we are all the lesser for it. Today this one young man is the standard bearer for all that have gone before him. 4000 deaths may be a statistic but the death of one mother's son is a goddamn tragedy we can all wrap our heads around. Or not.

So lower the flags. It is the very least we can do. And in honor of Lance Corporal Alberto Francesconi, so beautiful, so emblematic of all that is good and noble in young men and young Marines especially, I leave you with the words of Auden who says it better than I could ever:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden