Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

One by one, the faces display on the screen for several silent, unapologetic seconds. We read their ages and hometowns and study their expressions. It is sad. Maddening. Outrageous. Not because of where they were or what they were doing there. Because most of them were under thirty. Because a great many had only been legal for a couple years. Because some were not even old enough to vote for those who would send them off to die in service to their country - when they had hardly even begun to live.

On PBS's News Hour, Jim Lehrer posts the photos of U.S. servicemen and -women "as their deaths become official," pausing in the program to give tribute to these young soldiers, and it is in these soundless minutes that the human cost of war becomes real to me. Those daily statistics that numb my mind take on flesh and blood and remind me of the the decades that will never be lived, the dreams that will never take shape, the tragedy of loss for so many back home.

My nephew graduated from college three years ago. He is in his first apartment. He weathered his first job. He survived his first car breakdown and major repair bill. He is now beginning the next phase in his life. And most of the people whose pictures flash by every few nights are younger than he is now.

So every time another round of photos appears on the screen, my partner and I stop eating dinner or reading the mail, and we honor the latest soldiers to die overseas, far from their families and the country they loved. We take note of those whose hometowns are nearby, and we imagine what their families are going through. And we wait until the last photo fades out, because we have the time.