War’s gruesome visage snarls from flickering screens with bone-chilling horror. And with each explosion, every flash, the cost of freedom visibly manifests itself through death and destruction–right before our eyes.
Not many years ago I stood in poignant reflection as a mother decorated the grave of her son killed in battle at age 18. The ever-youthful photograph on his tombstone belied the passage of decades to the mother still posing, perhaps, another in her endless string of “might-have-beens.”
What might have been–had he lived? Whom might he have married, and how many children might they have had? How might he have handled joys and tears, success and failure?
Questions of what might have been naturally arise when the young die. Having lost a daughter in her youth, the Bible holds the only satisfying answer for me: “My times are in Thy hand.”
When Jenny was small, “might-have-beens” drifted through my mind. Whenever a group of children her age sang at church, I envisioned her among them. As other mothers described what fine young women their daughters were becoming, I wistfully projected Jenny into that role. And even today as my contemporaries extol the delights and virtues of grandchildren, I brush back tears of what might have been… had Jenny not been retarded… had she not died.
Until her last day I clung to one peculiar hope: Jenny might be healed, fully restored to physical and mental wholeness. But death finally stepped in to dash that dream, spawning an unwelcome barrage of new “might-have-beens.”
I support our Commander-in-chief and the legions he has dispatched into this conflict in Iraq. And I pray for a quick, decisive victory. But we must remember: when silence eventually blankets both desert and gun, other enemies, less obtrusive and obvious, defy defeat. They come in camouflage–a song, a smell, a picture– to release troubling thoughts long held captive. They are the might-have-beens.
My mind’s eye envisions them now, falling into ranks in ever-increasing numbers as we weep for the fallen. The glow of victory warms but for a moment; death’s icy grip hangs on and on.
Dwelling on might-have-beens always plunges me into a cold fog of despair. But the rising sun of recognition–acknowledging the measureless flow of blessing and joy still streaming from that life now gone–burns the mist away.
“Weeping may remain for a night,” assures the Bible, “but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Thus there is hope for our friends, families and companions who may soon be compelled to face the might-have-beens, unwelcomed, unburied and unresolved.
We must stand with them–united arm in arm–embracing together what might yet be.
MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS
Some think that war’s a faceless game
And never feel the awful cost
Of blood that’s spilled in freedom’s name
Which mounts as mothers’ sons are lost.
I’ve seen a grave one mother tends,
Her inner battles not yet won,
Still clinging to the might-have-beens
That were not buried with her son.
Copyright 2003 James McAlister
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