A mother's son goes to Iraq, part 2

I just got this from Melody Pigg about her son's deployement to Iraq. I think for most people, sons and daughters going to war is someone else's story. We don't think about the reality of it. Mrs. Pigg has put into words what many of us have not really thought about. I'd like to thank her for sending us her thoughts.--CG

"Thank you for posting the letter and pictures to the website. Believe it or not, it helped me deal with Marshall leaving. The tears started flowing Monday afternoon. Generally I'm able to control them, but every once in a while, they'll just start! The website brought some excitement to my day.

It seems that when you're blessed with a beautiful baby, you have all these "grand" ideas about what you're going to teach your child. In the beginning, you think, "there's plenty of time." Around the teenage years, you start realizing that time's running out but then a part of you says, "but I'll have the college years." Before I knew it, I would be talking to Marshall about something and he'd look at me like "why are you telling me this. I already know," and it would hit me that he did already know. Marshall taught us far more about life than we will ever teach him.

For now, everything is just where he left it. It will probably take me a couple of weeks to pick up the stuff he left out, to put shoes back in his closet, and to hang his Dress Blues in his closet. The tears will flow again because it's the realization that he won't be back for a while. Right now it's just comforting to see "parts of him" around the house. His brother was a little concerned that "Bubba" would not be home for his birthday, so we gave Michael a 7.8 birthday party (he'll be 8 in April) on Tuesday night.

Cherish your children. We always had people tell us, "wait until he's a teenager. He'll drive you crazy." Plus you hear people that are so relieved when their children go on to college. None of that ever happened with Marshall. We use to tell him that he only had a few more years to drive us crazy, so we'd be glad when he left. He still hasn't done it!

Marshall decided to take his cell phone back to California. He's going to mail it home when he's deployed. That will be really hard to get that phone in the mail because at least for now we still have some contact with hi