Maybe it's because I come from a military family - both parents were Army, two cousins currently serving in the Air Force, my uncle and father-in-law are both Navy (retired) and several friends are active duty and currently deployed or stateside - but news from the front always profoundly affects me. This country's soldiers - some so young - are being shipped to their deaths to fight Bush's war. And those that aren't killed by the insurgents still die anyway. They either commit suicide or they return to their families with shattered spirits and demons that will haunt them long after this war is over.
I am ashamed to admit that I have become callous to the war. I don't watch the news about it anymore because I cannot see one more family who has lost a son or a daughter. It's just too overwhelming - their pain and emotion too raw - and I feel it. I then feel grateful that the dead is not someone I know. Then, remorseful, because it's really relief and not gratitude that I feel; one emotion seems more selfish than the other.
But, sometimes, I am caught unaware. A headline intrigues me and I click on it, then the pain, the raw emotion of a family who has lost a child, comes flooding back, and all I can do is cry.
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