Part 5… Grieving is Hard

Grieving is hard. In the 60’s grief was ignored and avoided as much as possible. It was like my child never existed and I had not been a mother.

No one else my age was going through grief. Boyd and I staggered through our days, trying to make sense of our tragedy and the loss of our happy life.

Both of us were determined to move forward, have more children and recreate our life. I changed jobs to work days, so we could be together. We were determined that this loss was not going to define us.

As the initial shock began to wear off, we realized that Boyd’s draft status would go back to 1-A. The black cloud of war had returned. The idea that Boyd, a grieving father, would be drafted was abhorrent. We had six weeks to notify the draft board of Boyd Dale’s death. I counted up the six weeks and circled the date on our wall calendar.

Believing in the compassion of others, we decided to go make a personal appeal, we believed our loss was a horrible tragedy and we should be allowed to have time together to grieve. Boyd deserved better than being shipped off to war just months after his son’s death.

The day arrived, with heaviness in our hearts and minds and still feeling like deer in the headlights, we got in our Mustang to go plead for time.

The draft board was located in a typical nondescript depressing government building. Filled with people working at various gray metal desks, we were greeted with a sense of annoyance and bother. There were no chairs or private offices, just people at their desks ignoring us. Our hopes for some type of connection were dashed.

From across the room a lady loudly identified herself as the person in charge. She did not walk across the room to speak to us personally. We voiced our plight and asked for time to grieve. Couldn’t we have six months at least? She spoke loudly, bluntly, coldly, informing us that it was our tough luck and quickly dismissed us.

Shocked, we drove home in a daze of disappointment and disbelief at our treatment.

With the looming fear of war, all we could do was cling to the hope that miraculously his number wouldn’t be called.