Found this from my portal feeds….
-=-Nurse Ratched’s Notebook-=-: From my brother
A self-described cranky perfectionist, he talks about compressing the chest of a soldier in a failed, 12-minute attempt to restart a stopped heart. When the physician declared the patient dead, everything stopped.
“In the presence of all of these people, I am alone reading the [soldier's] casualty cards. I read that he was married. There was her name. He had two children, and there were their names. He was from a town near my own hometown of Clarksville, Tenn.,” Col. Kidwell wrote.
“I went back to the storage room and hid in a spot between the supply shelves. I just wanted a few minutes to regain my composure. … “We have to perform well, and our competencies, techniques and skills save lives. But sometimes, someone gets to us and we tumble like a house of cards,” he wrote. “This means we are still human.”
i get chills when i read about soliders dying in Iraq …I do something selfish and pray that my brother would be spared…
the other day, an npr report about one solider who was killed after a mortar attack, made me tear up again. I think what I got to me was all the memories professors, friends and neighbors shared about this one physics major. he was called up to duty, one year before he graduated. people had faith he would do so much with his life. it ended so quickly.
i pray i never have to work on a story like that for my brother. it would break my heart over and over….I don’t want to interview my parents, Jennie, Mark, Wes and people who knew and loved my brother. I don’t want people guessing at what could have been for him….I don’t want it all to end for him so quickly……
it still freaks me out to think this way.
i also know, intellectually, that’s it’s kinda insulting to think this way, to think he won’t be able to protect himself. he’s been through REAL Basic training, he went through the OCS course - he’s an officer. He has the chops to survive. He has the heart and soul to know what’s right and wrong. I know he would be good combat.
I try to avoid talking politics with him. We agree to disagree. He honestly believes he’s doing the right thing. He wants to be with his comrades, a sentiment shared by many soliders. A team mentality thing….I guess.
He knows I’m entitled to my own opinion. I try to avoid shoving down his throat.
I love him. I want him to be happy. I want him to fall in love and be loved in return. I want him to grow old and have kids. I want him to feel valued. I want him to go back to grad school….because he wants to apply for an engineering program. I want him to write his beautiful stories that are locked up in his soul….the ones he shared with me, when no one else was listening. I want him to travel for pleasure….not on a mission. I want him to get a job he feels respected at and that he enjoys. I want him to feel safe.
I want him to be happy.
I pray he has enough time to do all that.
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