A serious question for ALL DUers...

[MLFerrell]

My brother is going back to Iraq in June. I have been having terrible nightmares about an officer and a chaplain walking up to my mother's doorstep with a folded American flag.

My question is this: What would YOU do if a close family member was killed in Bush's war?

I have my own ideas, and they're uniformly unpleasant. Again, God forbid, if something were to happen, how would YOU deal with it?

[buff2]

1. I would kidnap him and get him out of the country.......

before that would happen. No one should agree to fight in bu$h's illegal war.

[MLFerrell]

2. How about a more practical, non-felonius alternative?

I'm just saying...

[brainy]

9. A lot of material here...

http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/

[proud patriot]

3. I would ask Cindy Sheehan for support and guidance

if I were to lose a close family member in Iraq.

[MLFerrell]

8. That is the best advice that I've seen on this thread thus far...

I feel like I'm losing my mind. Currently, I'm becoming extremely drunken in the (probably vain) hope that I won't have those horrible dreams yet again tonight.

I hope and pray that NONE of you EVER have to go through this...

[proud patriot]

12. Please write to her

:loveya: I'll send you some strength :hug: But that is
all I have to offer .

[MadMaddie]

4. I don't know...my sister was discharged for a knee injury before

all of this started...and this weekend I told her that I was glad she injured her knee...because she would be smack dab in the middle of Iraq..

We will pray for your brother and the rest of our military brothers and sisters to come home safely....

[karlrschneider]

5. Nobody can answer that question until God forbid it comes up.

Unfortunately, it will...for way too many families. Each of them will have to find their own way to cope with it.

[Monkeyman]

6. Honest there is no answer . May He Returned to you alive and well

[hang a left]

7. My mother's cousin's son is just left for his fourth tour. Airforce man

mind you.

All I know is this, I would swim with my boys on my back to some country that would take us as exiles. I would NOT let them die in a desert somewhere. They would have to kill me first.

[TomInTib]

10. I am with Monkeyman. There is no pat answer. We all deal with our situations differently.

When I was in combat, I was never too worried about what might happen to me, personally.

But the thought of my dear Mother getting the news absolutely terrified me.

If one of my sons was going, I would advise him to quit taking his anti-malarial as soon as he got to Iraq.

[Staph]

11. Both my nephew and my godson

served a year in Iraq. My sister and my college roommate (the godson's mother) lived on pins and needles for the year. My sister and her family choose to become more informed and, to a degree, involved in the anti-war movement. My old roommate became involved with her son's National Guard family support group.

I don't know how any of us would have dealt with the loss of either or both of these young men. From the lofty perch of experience (many years on this planet), I have come to realize that the phone call in the night or the knock at the door may be bad news completely unrelated to this war.

I've attended too many funerals. I have had to break the bad news to my mother that she was the last of her siblings. I sat in a hospital room for three days and nights and watched my father die. All I know and all I have learned has taught me how to survive the unsurvivable. You will have to learn your own way.

If you need to talk (electronically) with a fellow West Virginian, send me a private note. You and yours are in my thoughts and prayers.