Cindy Sheehan-Using her son's memory to get attention

I was angry when my father died because the whole world kept on moving along, yet my father was dead. My life had been turned upside down, but the people around me at school and on my rowing team kept moving along like nothing happened. One day, a few days after my father's death, I overheard two girls talking whom I had never met. They were talking about a student whose step-father had died recently. For a second, though there was no way they knew my father or either of my father's step-children and that my thought made no logical sense, I thought they were talking about my father. I was disappointed to realize that they were not. Here, at my small college, another death had occurred in the life of a student. My father's death was special at the college for a moment and then someone else's father's death was special. Or not. I was not special. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe millions, happen every day. Each one means something special to someone. It's just that I was the only one (along with a few relatives) who felt my father's death and who held him to be special.

As a writer, I wanted others to feel my pain. Even though I was wrong about this death being special in the greater scheme of things (my father was young, too, though not nearly as young as Ms. Sheehan's son), I wanted to get attention about it. I wanted to write about it. My father's death made me start writing poetry and eventually fiction. I became an English Major and eventually received an MA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis. That I am writing this is, in part, a result of the death of my father. I felt that writing would get across my pain and that people would feel sorry for me.

Well, I learned to write much better, but I never did interest people in the pain I felt for my father's death. At the time he died, I was 19, immature and with a lack of understanding about the world. Maturity would come later. If anything, writing made me understand that it is personally therapeutic in nature, but, when writing for others, one has to understand one's audience. What happened to me was not unique. Many people lose parents at a young age. Many people aren't even so lucky to have 19 good years with a wonderful father. My story was entirely uninteresting and it was arrogant of me to think that I could sell a novel about the death of my father.

The same is true of Cindy Sheehan. Her son died. Her pain must run so deep that only those who have lost a child can fathom it. Her son was special in that he was fighting for us and for the US Government. Her pain, while natural and sincere, is not special. Everyone experiences it at one time or another. We grieve. Some of us move on. Some of us are destroyed by it. But pain is a part of life. One can say we experience growth through pain, but that's not the point. The point is that pain is not special. To say that you are any more special than anyone else is to be arrogant. I came to realize this after many years of thought, so don't expect Cindy Sheehan to come to this realization any time soon.

I will let her have her grief, but she has absolutely no more nor less authority to speak about the necessity of this war than anyone else. One might argue that she has less authority than I do. I have two young children who are alive and cannot fend for themselves. If I believe that the war is necessary for their safety, then I have more to lose than she does and I thus have more moral authority to speak for or against it.

Also, didn't she say Pres. Bush was respectful at their first meeting? And now she's changed her story about the first meeting and wants a second one. Doesn't that sound overtly political.

Moreover, has anyone asked about what her son thought about the war. I don't know what her son thought, but I believe in this war. If my mother did not and used my death for my country to further her own political agenda, I would not be happy.

Also, he didn't have to go into the military. Wrong or right, he was going to go to war if the President called. When you go in the military, you don't get to wonder about the righteousness of whatever wars you are sent to. You know this or should know this when you sign up.

Additionally, most of the families of the fallen soldiers in this war believe in the righteousness of it. Why are we focusing on this one woman? There are two answers: Anything controversial makes a good story and politics.

Cindy Sheehan deserves our sympathy, but not our respect. She can believe she is special for the moment, but ultimately she is nothing more than a pawn of the left. Pawns are never special.