thedrifter
03-25-07, 07:44 AM
A mom's endless goodbye
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Until last week, Rosa Suarez del Solar had kept quiet. Her son, Jesus, was the first local serviceman killed in Iraq. His death so numbed her that she often could not speak of it.
When she did, she wept. She wept during a recent interview with our Mark Walker; the story was on the front page Wednesday last. It was the first time she had spoken publicly about Jesus' death or about what has happened in the four years since.
It has been correctly observed again and again that there is no pain like the sudden loss of a child. To parents who have not been visited by such horror, it is unimaginable.
It shows not merely in faces so distorted in grief that you can't see how they could be put together again.
It shows also in the way that shoulders, once thrown back in a mama's kind of here-I-am-world posture, now slouch and bend too far. They are not the same shoulders, these shoulders driven down by the desolation of broken dreams. They are not even the shoulders of the same mama.
Suarez del Solar's marriage came apart after her son's death, which must truly be the feared fault line in a mother's heart. Death equals eruption, hope flows away.
Her ex-husband, Fernando Suarez del Solar, became in his grief one of the nation's best-known anti-war activists. A sort of male Cindy Sheehan, with whom he occasionally appears.
He is not a loud protester, not mean and strident. He is not your classic crusader. He goes to the rallies when asked, and speaks awkwardly about Jesus and how he now believes the war was wrong to the bone.
Once in a while, he steps out from the crowd; he intends to do that Tuesday. He will begin a two-day fast in front of the federal building in San Diego on the double anniversary that changed everything: the war and the death of his son.
Some of this activity does not sit well with Rosa Suarez del Solar. One of the reasons she spoke up last week was that she objects to what she believes is her ex-husband's use of Jesus' name as a vehicle for his anti-war cause. She has problems, too, with his stories of the family's background that she says are false.
Thus anger had a hand in the sudden appearance of a mom weighed down by her long and perhaps permanent goodbye.
But the anger, and all of her ex's activities and her pent-up reactions to them, are in the end quite minor issues.
It's the roaring, terrible knowledge of her son's death that is always in her mind and on her face.
If you have never heard a wail of everlasting sorrow, or a cry of perpetual loss, this is your chance. Here is part of what a grieving mom said to Walker, simply and terribly, 10 days ago, in the mottled sunshine of a North County park, hard by Jesus' grave:
"I guard my pain. I'm not screaming at the world that my son has died. Sometimes, I just want to scratch at the earth and take him out."
To find lost sons, moms must scratch at the earth.
Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Until last week, Rosa Suarez del Solar had kept quiet. Her son, Jesus, was the first local serviceman killed in Iraq. His death so numbed her that she often could not speak of it.
When she did, she wept. She wept during a recent interview with our Mark Walker; the story was on the front page Wednesday last. It was the first time she had spoken publicly about Jesus' death or about what has happened in the four years since.
It has been correctly observed again and again that there is no pain like the sudden loss of a child. To parents who have not been visited by such horror, it is unimaginable.
It shows not merely in faces so distorted in grief that you can't see how they could be put together again.
It shows also in the way that shoulders, once thrown back in a mama's kind of here-I-am-world posture, now slouch and bend too far. They are not the same shoulders, these shoulders driven down by the desolation of broken dreams. They are not even the shoulders of the same mama.
Suarez del Solar's marriage came apart after her son's death, which must truly be the feared fault line in a mother's heart. Death equals eruption, hope flows away.
Her ex-husband, Fernando Suarez del Solar, became in his grief one of the nation's best-known anti-war activists. A sort of male Cindy Sheehan, with whom he occasionally appears.
He is not a loud protester, not mean and strident. He is not your classic crusader. He goes to the rallies when asked, and speaks awkwardly about Jesus and how he now believes the war was wrong to the bone.
Once in a while, he steps out from the crowd; he intends to do that Tuesday. He will begin a two-day fast in front of the federal building in San Diego on the double anniversary that changed everything: the war and the death of his son.
Some of this activity does not sit well with Rosa Suarez del Solar. One of the reasons she spoke up last week was that she objects to what she believes is her ex-husband's use of Jesus' name as a vehicle for his anti-war cause. She has problems, too, with his stories of the family's background that she says are false.
Thus anger had a hand in the sudden appearance of a mom weighed down by her long and perhaps permanent goodbye.
But the anger, and all of her ex's activities and her pent-up reactions to them, are in the end quite minor issues.
It's the roaring, terrible knowledge of her son's death that is always in her mind and on her face.
If you have never heard a wail of everlasting sorrow, or a cry of perpetual loss, this is your chance. Here is part of what a grieving mom said to Walker, simply and terribly, 10 days ago, in the mottled sunshine of a North County park, hard by Jesus' grave:
"I guard my pain. I'm not screaming at the world that my son has died. Sometimes, I just want to scratch at the earth and take him out."
To find lost sons, moms must scratch at the earth.
Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie