Come every Sunday with their flowers and beach chairs, their photos and memories of times gone by, sit by the beloved headstones that mark the last resting place of their warrior sons or daughters, these women of Section Sixty. Despite the fact that Arlington National Cemetery has strict rules regarding decorating trees that stand out among the headstones, or leaving pictures and sweet memories to the tombs, these mothers leave them, however, knowing that in a week or two, or three, will be swept away by stewards of the land, and then return with new pictures, new flowers, new love.
The cemetery has become a meeting place for the tears of mothers who lost children in the current battle in America, and also to share sympathy, love, strength and courage. They meet each other next to the family graves, waving 'hello' to those who are sweetly familiar to the heart, leaving only those that appear to need their privacy - those who have eyes and heart open just one voice, image a heart - the heart of him laying in the ground.
Mothers who return week after week with little rituals - one with a newspaper that writes in another with balloons to celebrate a birthday or anniversary, with a third letter, a toy or a small gift from a child just old Just remember that lost - a sister or brother who is growing with a legend instead of a living being. These young people still do not understand death, and still know what is reverence without knowing what the word means. They know enough to leave their offers little in the hands of mothers transmitting the headstones, messages from loved ones will never know.
A mother came a week for the last three years. She is the oldest member of the group on Sunday. She says that, when asked about the special balloons led, that is the birthday of his son, the third since his death. Who thought it would be easier to get three years later, but got more difficult, because only now is she beginning to realize the purpose of all this. But now she is feeling that he never came back. As he tells one of the other women - as both sit and look at each other and the vast sea of white headstones marking the endless rows of graves - as you said, a tear slips on her face. Just a single tear. All the tears of the past are now rolled into this.
The woman speaks in silence. Understands in silence. She nods silently. He sits and watches the flowers placed at the base of the stone - yellow and white daisies and a pair of white and pink carnations tied with ribbon for a florist. Speak to the heart in this sea of solemn markers. They talk about love, memory, a bond that is truly known only to the heart of a mother.
Sixty mothers of each section carries the threads of the relationship forward in the way only she knows how to defeat death, allowing, in fact, insisting that love is stronger than death and that therefore the relationship goes on and off as needed, as it should.
This tribute to love is eternal and unfathomable. And 'endless and deep as the ocean is deep. Through summer, autumn, winter and spring, it survives all that denies everything that would try to put in a box and put it on a shelf somewhere. Instead, these mothers remain fierce warrior in their devotion to their children, to each other, the life of his heart. They remain in their fierce determination to remember, never forget to allow embers of love never die.
This is their gift without end, the gift that allows love to triumph over death, and they give it willingly, with joy, with an inner need that is ultimately convincing. More and more give this gift until the tire body and close your eyes, and even then, the heart continues to remember.
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