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"Come back later. This isn't a good time," she said.

"We're sorry ma'am, but we can't do that. Please, let us come in."

The commander's pained look sought permission to enter.

Permission was granted.

The commander started the script, but she refused to let him "regret" by pressing her hands tightly over her ears.

Eventually, we were able to tell the woman what had happened to her husband. The legal guy explained how her husband's body would come home and how someone would be there for every step.

The medic watched her for signs of fainting as I held her hand, read from the Scriptures, and led in a prayer.

The compassion was as real as it could be—even if it wasn't real.

For you see, on this occasion, it wasn't real. All the players were volunteer family actors taking part in a base exercise designed to get us ready for a worldwide deployment.

The predictability of the script gives breath to the fear known by every person who has ever served in the military. It is a fear reenacted hundreds of times in the mind of the service member and their families. Despite the fear, they go, they do their jobs, and most of them come home.

And yet some won't return—some like Marine Captain Ryan Anthony Beaupre, Army Sergeant George Edward Buggs, and Army Private First Class Lori Piestewa, whose families were among the first to receive such a visit after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March. It is in their memory, and in memory of their fallen comrades—indeed, in memory of all who have fallen in battle—that we pause on Memorial Day this year to honor the sacrifice of those who never wavered as they served. And we ask God to fill their surviving loved ones with his peace.

Frankly, I'd rather have eaten the fish than go on that practice exercise with my Mortuary Affairs colleagues. The exercise triggered many unpleasant flashbacks.

They were flashbacks of barking dogs protesting our late-night arrivals on moonlit porches. Flashbacks of contorted people blurred by screen doors that they refused to unlatch. Flashbacks of the midnight screams of spouses, children, and parents as they were informed of their new reality.

This exercise was much too real. It was exactly the way it happens every time—too much of the time.

We received a high grade on the exercise, and I suppose that was good because the next visit we made was a real one.

We had to interrupt a little boy's birthday party to do it, but we did. As our team turned away partygoers on the doorstep, the commander began his script.

"Ma'am we regret to inform you …."

Norris Burkes, formerly a military chaplain, is now a hospital chaplain at the Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, California.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine.
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