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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
A TERRIBLE THING REVISITED 2005-08-10 Two and a half years ago, as the country was preparing to go to war in Iraq, there were many antiwar protests around the country and the world. I wrote the following article then to talk about the hell that war is for mothers. As a lone mother of a slain soldier keeps vigil outside George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, waiting to ask him why her son had to die, I am once again posting the article. While there are many who support Cindy Sheehan, and others who think she should not be doing this, it might be helpful to imagine what it might be like to be in her shoes. It has often been said of women who have been rejected by lovers that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," but it can also be said of mothers that " a mother's love is a terrible thing." Cindy Sheehan suffered the worst possible loss imaginable. The child she carried within her for nine months and nurtured for at least 18 years died at the age of 24, in a lonely desert thousands of miles from her loving embrace. She has a right to be angry. She has a right to protest. We ought to all try to put ourselves in her shoes; we ought to all hope we never have to suffer her pain. February 9, 2003 As I watch the news coverage of the "code pink" war protests, I think of an episode of the television show Judging Amy. Amy's mother Maxine, played by Tyne Daly, tells her daughter that Òa mother's love is a terrible thing.Ó Maxine has said something which grabs hold of the deepest part of me as a woman and a mother. While I don't know if the planned war against Iraq is either justifiable or necessary, I do know that the women who protested the war on Saturday were marching as the mothers, nurturers and life givers of the world who do not want to see their children or other children slaughtered. There is nothing like the love of a mother for her children and I suddenly realize that many men do not understand this. I don't know if this is a biological thing - those of us who carry children inside our bodies have a different kind of connection - or if it is because men and women are raised differently. But I have seen time and again that it is mothers who fiercely protect their children even as fathers push their daughters and especially their sons towards independence and risk taking. While the pushing may be a necessary thing, men are better at it than women because it is more natural for them. They either feel less protective or they hide their protective feelings better. Years ago when I first became a mother I wasn't prepared for the ferocity of maternal love nor for the sadness that sometimes accompanied it. Like all caring mothers, I became protective of my four children, worrying about every cough and sneeze, every fever and rash. I was a mommy now and my life was changed forever. There were small beings in the world that I was responsible for in every way imaginable - from their creation to their safety to their education to launching them into the world. But I wasn't fully aware of how that protectiveness and sense of connection to my children would strengthen in time, making it very painful to watch them grow up and away from me. Today, thirty three years after the birth of my first child, my husband and I are alone. The children have all grown up and moved out. As I delivered each one to their college dormitory I shed a few private tears, knowing that this was the beginning of their lives away from me and the end of my ability to protect them as I could when they were small. Yet no matter how old they get they will always be my children, and the terrible love that would sacrifice anything for them is as strong as ever. I have known many women over the years who have buried a child and I know if there was anything they could have done to save that child - by sacrificing their own lives if necessary - they would have. None of them, however, had that choice. Their children died in accidents or from catastrophic illnesses and they were helpless. The women who marched yesterday don't want to be helpless. They want their terrible love to have some impact on those who would sacrifice their children. And so I understand the women who march against war. They know that long after the war is over and the young soldiers and innocent civilians are buried, there will be grieving mothers whose lives will never be the same, whose terrible love could not keep their children safe. They know something the war planners cannot know except in the most intellectual of ways - that war is hell most of all for mothers. |