Forget whether the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq are right – that is not relevant to this blog post – but it seems that each day I watch the news there are more deaths in Afghanistan. More fathers, sons, daughters, wives dying, more coffins returning home to their family.
For someone who knows the devastation of death, I just cannot imagine what these familes go through. What they go through when they are alive fighting on the front line and what they go through when they hear that fateful news…..
I don’t think I could cope with the not knowing, the fear, …read more

In the UK, the leader of the opposition David Cameron and his wife suffered the loss of their child yesterday. Politics stopped for the day as the country realised one thing – that death always puts any problems into context. I have suffered with my grief but without the worlds press looking on at me. When something like this happens I cannot imagine what it must be like to grieve in the public eye….
The pain of losing a child is immense, my thoughts go out to anyone in this position. Often I say that death is natural, death is part …read more

Someone was talking today and saying how brave I was, I know that the lady meant it as a compliment and I thanked her for that….however, I then started to think about being brave?Isn’t brave when you know the risk and still find the courage to do it? When you suffer a bereavement you don’t choose that, in fact courage is in quite short supply in my experience at the point of losing the person you love.I came to the conclusion that widows and widowers need to dig deep and find the courage to face the world, to not give in …read more

Each day I watch the news, today I see the US have now lost 3,706 soldiers in Iraq, the figures in Afghanistan are rising, when will it ever end? I think the world needs my mum – she would be great at sitting down all the leaders, banging her fists on the table, telling them what idiots they are and that she had, had enough! Stop these stupid wars or face the consequences…..none would mess with her, trust me!  
 The whole world, all religions are suffering loss and I can only imagine the level of pain across the world. You …read more

Following on from my last post on how my heart bleeds for the widows/widowers of the Iraq soldiers I have just read at the Washington Post that there have been  
- As of Thursday, July 5, 2007, at least 3,591 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,951 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.
The striking part for me is that 1,000 were not due to hostile action – for anyone …read more

I wish, as a world that we could find peace, find a way of living together rather than dying together. Death is always painful but for me, death through war seems wrong. My heart aches when I read about the widows of soldiers and cannot imagine their feelings. As civilians that benefit from others giving their lives for our safety we should never lose our gratitude, our  memories of how these brave people gave their lives for ours.
To bring this home – yesterday, the BBC wrote about the latest funeral
The widow and the two sons of a “great soldier” killed …read more