Cindy Sheehan

In today's heat Cindy has been on my mind a lot. She's standing in Crawford, Texas, waiting to talk to Bush. Yeah, she talked to him--or met him, anyway, in a room full of token mothers-of-dead-sons, a bit after her son Casey was killed in Iraq. She says he never quite got her name, called her "Mom". She wants some explanation of the deaths, of all the needless suffering. She's standing till she gets that. Today my partner and I fought, because I was sending cards that said "talk to Cindy" to Bush at the Whitehouse. I asked him to send one. No way, he said, having no desire to communicate with the Prez. I raged uncharacteristically.
Maybe because I stood alone last Friday in my women in black vigil, and when you stand alone, in the heat, you think about each death, each injury, each stupid, useless act of pain. I figured out that my town has less people in it than the soldiers dead in Iraq, and that my entire county has less people in it than civilians reported dead in Iraq.
The ravens flew on the air currents, swooping, gliding, calling out now and again. People passing flashed peace signs. I cried. I want this to stop, today. Casey was 24. Cindy carries a picture of him as a toddler. Open, smiling face. I post a lot of those photos on the window near this computer. People passing stop to look. Some are angry, some are sad. You do what you can, and you go on, over and over. My thoughts are with you, Cindy, there in the Texas heat.