The Washington Post today runs a powerful story on Arlington National Cemetary’s Section 60, home to the “the graves of 336 men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan — almost one in 10 of the dead.”
Mothers and widows, friends and regretful exes write intimate notes, some as casual as a message stuck on a refrigerator door.
“I called your old cellphone the other day. Someone named Brian has it now, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew anything about you.”
“It was so wonderful having lunch with you. Now that I know how easy it is to get here by Metro, I’ll come by way more often.”
Here, the deaths haven’t been fully absorbed. People talk to their dead. They still see their dead. “Somebody drives by,” says Linda Bishop, a few feet from the grave site of her son Jeff, “and you think it’s him. You see him.” The phone rings, says Xiomara Mena Anderson, standing over the grave of her son Andy, and “I always think it’s him.”
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