Kimmy Kirkwood & Will Stacey's Love Story

The social media giant, Facebook, marked its tenth anniversary yesterday.

 

Big deal, you say?  It's just a place for people to go online and post the silly and sometimes significant happenings of their life? 

 

Yes.  That's exactly it.  Facebook is the world's largest social network, connecting 1.23 billion people to each other and Kimmy Kirkwood is especially grateful that on Facebook she can find a priceless record of pictures and status updates she had with the love of her life, a Marine named Will Stacey.

 

Kimmy Kirkwood and Will Stacey
Photo Courtesy of Kimmy Kirkwood

 

 

Will Stacey posting to Kimmy Kirkwood: "Regardless, I continue to love you like a fat kid loves cake." 

 

Come on.  Who could resist such a romantic thought, right? 

 

Kirkwood and Stacey planned to marry but in the last year of Stacey's deployment to Afghanistan in January 2012, he was tragically killed by an explosive device while on patrol.

 

Facebook has changed forever the way that people around the world stay in touch with each other but more significantly it has also changed the way that people grieve and remember the precious time they spent with their loved ones.

 

"Sometimes when I am lonely, I go back and read everything he sent me," Kimmy writes.  "I didn't think about it much then, but having it all in one place took on a complete new meaning when I lost Will forever."

 

Here is the sweet story of Kimmy Kirkwood and Will Stacey that was featured on BuzzFeed:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/after-her-marine-boyfriends-death-woman-finds-their-story-to?bftw

Arlington Cemetary Allows Personal Mementos

Arlington National Cemetery has a heart.

 

Officials at the cemetery recently talked to families about their months long practice of leaving personal items on soldier's headstones and Arlington is now compromising on its policies about leaving the personal mementos at gravesites.

 

Today's post is an update of a story I  wrote about on October 3 discussing how staff at Arlington National Cemetery were collecting and discarding personal mementos left in Section 60 of the cemetery an area where soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.  This area of the cemetery is where each visitor's grief is new and raw. 

 

A Military Headstone in Section 60

 

The families had no idea that their love letters, photos, balloons and other items were gone and thrown away until they visited their loved ones and found their tombstones bare.

 

Arlington National Cemetery staffers sat down and met  with the families on October 6 and discussed the situation and a compromise was reached.  Arlington says it now has a better understanding of the comfort that grieving families and friends receive when they leave personal treasures at the gravesites and softening the rules is a measure of support to the families in their time of grief.

 

Cemetery spokeswoman Jennifer Lynch said the cemetery will allow displays through the fall and winter months when the grass doesn't need cut often and that the cemetery will also review its regulations and policies to see if long-term changes can be made. 

 

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the nation's oldest cemeteries and is run by the U.S. Army.  Section 60 holds special significance for that is home to soldiers most recently killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Arlington National Cemetery said it collected the mementos because it had been receiving complaints that Section 60 was looking less than military with photos, stuffed animals, balloons and love notes taped to headstones.  Officials also said people sometimes left inappropriate items in the cemetery such as ammunition, glass and alcohol.

 

But inappropriate as others might think them to be, those personal items were mementos of love, reflecting shattered lives and a need to try and make some sense out of what had happened to their loved ones.

 

Section 60 is truly hallowed ground.

 

 

 

Changes At Arlington Cemetery

A cemetery is an intimate place.

For me, it is a place where I let down my guard and become vulnerable to my feelings.  Sometimes I raise my arms to the sky as if saying that I am ready to let it all wash over me but other times I sit silently and close my eyes and try to center my thoughts.

 

In the summertime when I visit my husband's grave, I sometimes love to lay in the grass that covers where he is buried.  As I lay on my back looking up at the sky, I love to let my hands run through the blades of grass and feel the warmth of the sun envelope me knowing that some part of him is underneath me.

I don't do this every time I go there but when I do I find it to be comforting.

Isn't that the whole point of going to a cemetery?  To find comfort, to try and put yourself back together, to heal and to also find some measure of peace?

I talk to my husband while I am visiting there and I also leave things near his marker that I know he liked, such as cookies and shells from the beach.  It's my way of  telling him that I am thinking of him and I'm still caring about him.  It's an emotional connection that gives me strength.

I was reminded of the healing role of my many cemetery visits while reading a touching Washington Post story yesterday about Section 60 in the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.  The story reported that the small treasures and personal mementos people have routinely left at their loved ones graves for months is now being collected by the cemetery's workers and taken away.

Arlington National Cemetery
www.arlingtoncemetery.mil

Section 60 hold special significance because that is where more than 800 recently deceased Iraq and Afghanistan war dead are buried and the pain of each relative's grief is still new and raw.  Arlington National Cemetery is one of the nation's oldest cemeteries and within its 624 acres lies more than 14,000 veterans, including some who fought in the Civil War.

For many, many months, loved ones personalized the stark gravestones of their spouses, children and friends with pictures, balloons, dog tags, handmade trinkets, holiday decorations and love letters as they try to find some kind of answer to the searing heartbreak they feel about their special person's death.

 

But the cemetery has changed its mind and is now collecting anything left at the gravesites.  Arlington cemetery's executive director plans to meet with the families of the deceased this Sunday to discuss the new policy of cleaning up section 60. 

It seems that from the Army's point of view, the cemetery needs to stay clean and look just like every other part of Arlington Cemetery but for the families, the disarray of the personal belongings left at the gravesites reinforced their love, their unwavering bond with their loved one and reflected their shattered dreams.

This link will take you to The Washington Post story, headline, "Another Death, Another Loss":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cleanup-in-arlington-national-cemeterys-section-60-upsets-families-of-war-dead/2013/10/01/ec5de34e-2ac4-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html?tid=auto_complete

Niall Coti-Sears' Bravery

Niall Coti-Sears
Courtesy of Fox 5 News

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Niall Coti-Sears is one of the reasons we Americans have the freedom to exercise this philosophy.

As we prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July this week and buy the fireworks, heat up the grill and make the potato salad, let us pause and remember the bravery of one young man who heroically fought overseas for his country and who makes our patriotic celebration possible.

Lance Cpl. Niall Coti-Sears, 23, was killed in Helmand province, Afghanistan, two weeks ago while conducting combat operations, according to the Department of Defense.

American military families can never be given enough credit and thanks for the sacrifice and hardship they experience as their loved ones travel thousands of miles away and put their lives on the line every day so that we can have freedom and democracy in the United States of America.

Stories about the war in Afghanistan and details of battles and body counts are written about in newspapers and broadcast on air but the majority of us have become numb to the constant reports and hardly pay attention.  We forget that America is still fighting a war in Afghanistan until the tragic reality hits home.

War is not something that happens to someone else's kids -- it happens to the young men and woman who live in our community.  It happens to men and women who went to school with our children and to the families you see in church or in the grocery store every week.

A couple of summers ago I was introduced to Niall Coti-Sears at a friend's Fourth of July party and we all stood around while he talked about how he had just joined the Marines.  Niall went to school with the son of one of my best friends and I remember looking at him while he talked with the group about how much he loved the Marines and thought to myself, "Oh my God, he's so young."

William Coti, 81, a retired Marine colonel who served in Korea and Vietnam, is Niall's grandfather.  William Coti told The Washington Post that Niall's patrol was ambushed and that Niall died of wounds received in the attack.

My heart and prayers go out to his mother, Susan Coti, for I will never imagine the depth of what it feels like to travel to Dover Air Force Base to claim your son's body.  But I also offer my humble thank you for having a son so brave, so heroic that he fought and gave up his life for the United States in Afghanistan.

This link will take you to the story that Fox 5 News aired on Niall Coti-Sears:

http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/18884566/arlington-marine-killed-in-afghanistan

Dogs Are Making A Difference for Veterans

Dogs are perceived as completely nonjudgemental and therefore are incredible stress reducers.  Research shows that people who are facing a stressful situation or coming out of a traumatic combat event have lower heart rates, blood pressure and anxiety levels when they are with a dog.

Now NBC News has aired a wonderful story about an 89-year-old U.S. veteran who has raised millions of dollars to train dogs to help the more than 40,000 service men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan make the transition to civilian life.  Please click on this link and watch the story (the puppies are too cute!):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#46196845