"Mrs. Bohler," they ask.
"Yes, that me. Is there something wrong?"
"Ma'am, may we step inside?" Your breath catches.
"Um...I guess."
As they're walking past you, you squeak out "Is Chris okay?"
"Mrs. Bohler, The Secretary of Defense regrets to inform you that..."
Everything falls apart.
As Deborah Bohler, mother of Chris Bohler, who just died in a chopper crash, wrote that her heart "shattered into a million pieces. Dear God gives us strength through this pain." (http://www.wral.com/soldier-killed-in-afghanistan-helicopter-crash-has-local-ties/13229052/)
Chris Bohler is one of two soldiers identified so far from the crash, alongside Jesse Lee Williams (http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/12/18/soldier-from-elkhart-ind-killed-in-helicopter-crash-in-afghanistan/).
I was pretty shocked two nights ago when family members started emailing me to ask if I was okay and if all my soldiers are okay. Apparently, news broke in the States about a helicopter going down, killing six soldiers.
I was shocked because my family knew about it before I did--it wasn't big news out here. I was also shocked because it was such big news in the States. It's not that it shouldn't be big news, but we lose close to ten soldiers a month out here (about half of what we lost last year).
I didn't realize it, but there is some sort of threshold for reporting casualties back home. People never hear about the couple of soldiers who die by, say, an IED out here, but if there's a MASCAL (mass casualty) incident, then it makes the airwaves.
What about the marine who died a week or so ago from an IED? He deserved his two minutes in the sun, with a brief news report on where he grew up, a few comments from his family, and a moment of TAPS playing alongside the listing of his basic information.
And while many people hear about this crash, think it's sad, and change the channel, there will be six families who were hanging up Christmas wreaths and now must hang on for dear life as everything crumbles around them. Six families who just got that knock on the door--the one they feared the most--and who will find nothing but tears under the tree later this week.
This incident sunk deeply into my wife's tender heart. A handful of people unexpectedly asked her about me, which struck her as odd, and then she saw news footage about the crash. For a while, she was paralyzed with fear that it was me. When I realized that people were making a big deal about this, I emailed me family to tell them that me and my soldiers were fine. Her fear turned into heartache for the wives, mothers, and children whose fears were not alleviated, but realized.
My friends, we should feel this for every deceased soldier and his family! They are not just a statistic from the Army's war against terrorists, they are husbands, sons, and fathers with rich stories of life and love who were just tragically lost in America's war against her enemies. It is not just their blood that they shed for you, but the joy of their families that was just sacrificed on the altar of freedom.
We should not avoid these stories. We should cling to them. They should break our hearts. Their families should be in our prayers. And we should remember them amidst the pleasant festivities that we enjoy this time of year. We should thank God for a few of them by name as we pray before our Christmas Day mealtime.
The tragedy is not simply the loss of these soldiers and those we lose every week, it is the fact that come Christmas Day, as some families experience their first Christmas with an empty seat at the table, we will not remember them.
