Stressors from Anonymous...

Stressors. You don't know you have them til that tripwire gets stepped on.... jezus, I'm still shaking.....

I did 20 or so funeral escorts for KIA with the Patriot Guard Riders out of Dago. 5 or 6 a year.... they were all every one different. You would never know a tragedy was driving by but for the growl of all the harleys. A few times it was the family, the military honour guard, and us. 

One time we got a mission that turned out to be a hell of a rainy day, 8 of us showed up at a funeral home in El Cajon. The military honour guard couldn't make it, it fell to us to work out being pall bearers, we found our senior NCO- and old Marine tanker, and he counted cadence low, while we carried the casket out to the hearse for the trip to the cemetery. We went by his ma, white as paper, dad, bewildered, and his young girlfriend, wrapped in a fatigue jacket way to big for her, mascara running black stripes of grief down her young face. That was it. We followed the hearse in the rain, knowing there was someone much colder than we on that run, three people who were more miserable than we could ever know .....

Always different. Sometimes some of the soldiers squad mates are there, sometimes not. The Cav has its traditions, the Marines, Rangers.... but the families are all the same. But different. Wives holding newborns walked down our line, thanking each of us for honouring her man..... that was rough, that. Mothers, eyes filled with tears, thanking us. Wives. Little sisters. Grandparents.......... strangers cared enough, and understood their senseless loss. 

Sometimes we'd meet the planes on the tarmac, and be at attention when the awful reality for families can no longer be denied, and that box with all their hopes and dreams, dead now, gets slid out of the cargo bay. 

One of our regular members lost her own son, and Ive stood across from her in the flag line, watching her struggle and win the fight to keep her composure, and was able to keep mine thereby. 

So I did this again and again, and was starting to ..........get to the edge of my .......sanity. Composure. Ability to maintain, and Tanya got this job in Canada, and I had an honourable way out. 
And while I carried that around, I really had no idea how much of a hole it had eaten in my heart, til about 40 minutes ago, when by chance I came across a movie... "Taking Chance" about a Marine officer and the dead kid he is escorting home.

I came on it at a scene where the coffin is coming off the plane, no sappy music, no wails of grief, just people standing there, the passengers just realizing what was happening.....
And I went to pieces. I don't do that. 

Stressors. Never know when you'll trip one.