| Bearing Witness |  |
| Today three years ago you swallowed
your final taste of earth
after nearly a year as one of the first to help secure
Baghdad International
and attempt to tame Sadr City where the enemy
offered a price for your head.
My blood boiled when we learned this
but your dad said, "to want him that bad,
he was damn good. My boy was better and braver
than I could ever be."
The pride that a side of our split nation
doesn't understand
finally helps us to sleep through the night
after the message from Iraq came to us
sixteen hours after you, mortally wounded,
spent over 400 rounds
to secure and save ten other men before you secured
your shell in the arms of your commander.
The seven days from Baghdad, to Germany, to
Dover, Delaware, then home 100 miles south of
Atlanta was the longest week of a lifetime.
I only recently told your dad
that the night before the chaplain arrived at 6 a.m.
I cried, couldn't sleep, and restless
dozed on the sofa where the knock that still echoes
found me.
I know it was the premonition,
my prep to stay strong, because you knew I could,
for your dad, that Marine broken
only by your death.
After the chaplain left I told your dad
I couldn't tell him how to get through this,
I could only remind him to hold in his heart that
You died a hero, not the once drug addicted youth
who had returned to the roots of good seed
planted for 33 years.
We were angry that our Creator had not
removed the cup of sacrifice from us, just as He did not
from Jesus or those who liberated Buchenwald or Dachau.
But where would the world be without
such sacrifice for civilization's future?
And even though the heavens and our heart parted
with thunder on a day so dark
a parent wonders how their body withstands it,
we finally accepted faith's truth to the core,
Not our will, but Thine be done.
And today, three years after you swallowed
your last taste of earth, as the world still rages with pain and
suicide bombers kill at checkpoints
convinced our nation "doesn't have the stomach
for victory" convinced "they will destroy Downing Street
and the White House" convinced the world will
one day live beneath Shariah Law,
I return to the letter sent to us by
one of your war time buddies who said
you'll always be an example shining in
his heart, that something you said will forever
ring true, something
your dad and I will cling to as you dwell
with your comrades inside a world we cannot yet see.
Something I'll bear as witness to the world
that your dad and I will uphold.
Your words:
"Sometimes you just gotta get out there,
No matter how scared you are and do
It. Sometimes it is part of the greater good.
There are more people than you can count
Who are looking up to you to do your job
No matter the consequences." | For Sgt Patrick Tainsh, our son, our hero By Deborah Tainsh
(Author of Heart of a Hawk)
Copyright 2007
Listed February 22, 2007 | 
Sgt. Patrick Tainsh
KIA Iraq 2/11/04
|
It is illegal to use this poem without the author's permission.
~~ Send your comments and/or use permission request to Deborah. ~~ |
