Not with a bang.

It’s official. The docs are signed, the keys returned. The war-that-was-never-ever-declared-a-war-by-Congress is OVER.

I was on my way to work, driving down a steep country road when I heard the news. And that’s all it was, just news. Blah blah blah a story. Followed by other stories that I didn’t pay attention to because I was too busy thinking about the war that wasn’t a war.

The non-war that my son returned to three times over the course of four years. But he was one of the lucky ones. He survived. And any injuries he received were not important enough to tell his mother about.

Unlike the 4,487 American service members who didn’t survive. And the 32,226 who were injured severely enough for their moms to be told. And the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis either killed, injured or displaced. But they don’t count because, well, we don’t want to think about them.

It’s over. Maybe. Sort of.

We’ll see….

The question is, will anybody outside of the military even know? Because we, as a people, have been sheltered from the facts. The tone was set by our former leader (he-who-must-not-be-named) when he told us to show our patriotism and go shopping. Don’t worry our pretty little heads about what was going on over there. And then he told the bad guys to ‘bring it on.’

AARUGH!!!

Okay. Step back now. Breathe deep. Much better….

When I was formulating the idea for this blog I told myself it would be non-political. It’s about art and life and everything in between, right? Painting, not politics. But for a long time this war WAS my life, affecting everything I did. It’s why I stopped painting. Why I moved my elderly mother into my studio, ensuring I wouldn’t have a place to paint if I wanted to. Because if I couldn’t save my son, maybe I could save my mom. It’s why I quit my galleries and just let my career turn to dust. You can read about some of that here, written during deployment #2.

It’s why I was a crazy woman–absolutely bat shit crazy— for four plus years. Because being consumed by fear and rage and anticipatory grief will do that to a person. So will going to funerals of young men who are called heros for being unlucky enough to be on the wrong end of a bullet or a bomb. And writing condolence letters to the unlucky moms. Hundreds of  letters, until one day I woke up–not that I ever slept–and said, “I CAN NOT. DO THIS. ANYMORE.”

And so I pulled back and allowed some semblance of normalcy to creep into my life. I never for one minute stopped caring. But I had to start living my life again. My son was home. He was safe. For me, it was time to move on.

And now, this war-that-was-never-a-war is over.

But only for some. Because for those who lived it or died in it or came home missing something, or for those whose loved one is never coming home…this war-that-was-never-a-war won’t be over for a long, long time.