From today's The Daily Beast:

"WAR AT HOME
4. Soldier Suicides Called Emergency
Expect the number of suicides among American soldiers to increase, the top U.S. military official said Wednesday, as the more troops come home after years of wartime service. "The emergency issue right now is suicides'' said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Over the weekend, Fort Hood, in Texas, saw four suicides, including one murder-suicide. To combat the trend, military officials have tried to lengthen the time between deployments and increase awareness of the threat..."

Sometimes I wonder fi Maris's military duties triggered PTSD from past life memories, of which he would speak to family and friends. He recalled bits and pieces of past lives on battlefields in the Middle Ages, the Third reich, etc.

My friend Laughs-A-Lot (Uyetsiga Udodi) sent this to me. It is always a good poem to read and re-read. I wish I had thought of sending it to Maris last year.

I have read it a few times today, to remind myself of why I am still here.

Invictus

by

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Labor Day 2010

Maris left for Lackland AFB on Labor Day, 2006. Any day now, his 4 year commitment would have been over, and he would have been coming home.

I have just started reading a book by Rudolf Steiner called Staying Connected.: How To Continue Your Relationships With Those Who Have Died.

At the very beginning of the book are 2 quotations from Steiner's writings:

"This is what it comes down to: that we learn to experience that those who have passed through the gate of death have only assumed another form. Having died, they stand before our feelings like those who, through life circumstances, have traveled to distant lands, whither we can follow them only later. We have therefore nothing to bear but a time of separation. "

and

"Know the spiritual world! Then, among the many other blessings that humanity will gain will be this: that the living and the dead will be able to form a unity."

I have spent this year working on myself. It will not bring Maris back; but it is a gift I can offer him: that I will bring less unfinished business with me into the afterlife.

If I had known who and what I was...if I knew how to listen to my own inner guidance...Maris would not have had to suffer. As it was, he paid a huge price to wake me up.

A year ago, in one of those twilight lands between sleep and wakefulness, Aidoneos, the God of the Underworld, said to me, "Are you ready for what will come?" and because I misunderstood him, I said "Yes." I did not ask him who or what he meant.

And that is the way I have lived my whole life. I have always had everything, and I have always lost it all.

This lifetime, for me, hs been about the need for purification. I may have purged, but not purified. It has been one bad decision after another.

Yet there was beauty and some good decisions mixed on. Maris was one of the most beautiful things that ever came to me.

I do not want to make the same mistakes in a future lifetime with him.

One of the nurses who cared for me after maris was born told me he would be a source of healing to me. I wonder what she meant. I wonder if this is what she meant.

I love you, Maris. I wish you were coming home.

On this Labor Day, I offer you the gift of my labor. I am working very hard on myself, so that I will be better able to help others. Never having worked on myself, I had only emptiness to offer you.