Death From Afar

In the book I'm reading, Let the Great World Spin, there is a character named Claire who's son died in Vietnam during the war there.  I wonder how it feels to have your own family member die?  I mean, she didn't even know about it until long after it happened.  That must feel so terrible. I just want to try to imagine what its like, to have all that shock from so far away.

Her son died in the war, but he wasn't even a soldier.  He was doing computer programming for people who died.  He was the person who kept track of the deaths.  He was literally the death counter.  Its very interesting to see this side of war.  How can a person die in the war even if they aren't fighting.  When i think of deaths associated with war, i think of battle and fighting.  I definitely don't think of computer programming in a cafe.  In the book she says, "It was a Sergent... He kept playing with his hat on his knee.  And then he just said, your son passed."  In this part she is talking about who came to her house to tell her about her son dying.  Can you even imagine having someone come into your house, sit down, tell you your son died, leave, and go to another house to do the same?

The other mothers who lost sons in the war had similar, but also very different experiences.  One woman only received a telegram telling her her son died.  Imagine, just a telegram, not even a real person to console you.  Another woman had three different sons die, and thus had three different people come to tell her her sons had died.  All of the other women had sons who were actually fighting on the front lines, instead of on a computer.  Nevertheless, all their sons died, all of them are in extreme pain, and all of them need someone to support them.  How people can hold themselves up through all of that is incredible.

To read about all of these women, all of this pain, and all of this suffering, is really upsetting, but its also very interesting.  Its a very new idea to me that there are different types of death in war.  I used to think there was just sickness, battle wounds, and assassination of leaders.  This is a fantastic book because its so eye opening to new ideas, thoughts, and issues.