Holy crap! Today was Memorial Day in the US…and you know what that means…Shopping! Barbecues! White shoes until Labor Day! Flags! Flags! More flags and bunting!!! Because people died and we have to show our respect, right?

Banks closed. Stores open.

WTF??? Well gather ’round, girls an’ boys, ’cause Arty Life has a story to tell you.

Once Thrice upon a time my son was in Iraq.

He was not there for the scenery.

I can say, without a doubt, that I spent all three of his deployments AND the time in between deployments AND the four years after he got out when they could still call him back…I spent all that time dwelling in the various stages of bat-shit crazyland.

That’s right…BAT-SHIT CRAAAAAAAAAZY LAND!

It ain’t easy being a warrior mom. In fact it sucks.

Because war sucks.

On his 21st birthday, FirstBorn told me he felt like he was 40. Said his hair was coming in gray. Well hell, he did some growing up in a way that most of us will NEVER know. But in the end we were lucky. He came home.

But not all of his friends did.

I stopped painting back then, started writing. Writing when life was one-step-at-a-time-make-it-through-another-day-fragile. When every car coming up the lane was cause to stop and hold my breath until it passed our drive.

When I didn’t know if I would ever see my son again.

I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

I wrote my heart. And I kept it close. Shared parts of it with one or two friends.

They read it and gently suggested I ‘talk’ to someone.

Someone who wouldn’t have a clue. Who wouldn’t understand.  Who didn’t know what it was like to have people shooting at their kid. Don’t think so.

So I ‘talked’ to my computer. For years.

And in the end, I came home too.