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Less than a month after Mike was killed, I found myself back at Arlington for Mike’s funeral, numbed by grief and holding a 5-month-old Jake. I hardly remember delivering a eulogy, which was
filmed live on national television. “Mike is a hero not for the way that he died,” I said, “but rather because of the way he lived.” He was buried in Section 34 of the cemetery, which is
flanked by Grant Drive. Mike was given a white marble headstone. In the years since, I’ve tried to think of what Martin Luther King Jr. said about the “arc of the moral universe” as a way to
make some sense of Mike’s death. When the loss is recent and up close and personal, it’s harder to believe in that arc. But in the years since 2001, when I’ve stood in Arlington among all
the headstones stretching out as far as one can see, I’ve felt that as precious as Mike’s one headstone is to me, it’s even more precious because it’s part of the whole. This year, Memorial
Day is more difficult than before because of the moral injury suffered by the veteran community due to the harm that’s coming to our allies and partners in Afghanistan. On previous Memorial
Days, I would mourn but I had a greater ability than I do now to say the sacrifice was worth the cost. That phrase in his eulogy about the way Mike lived his life was central to the reason
I, along with several of Mike’s comrades, set up a nonprofit charity to assist the approximately 30 families of the men who fought alongside the CIA and Green Berets in northern Afghanistan
immediately after 9/11. We called it Badger Six, a call sign used by members of Mike’s team in 2001. Mike wasn’t able to continue living his life, so we who are left are living our lives in
his way through Badger Six. Eight years after Mike’s death, I remarried. My husband, Thys, and I have a son, Lucas, who is now 12. I recently visited Arlington with Lucas. Spring is my
favorite time to be there and fall, I guess, my least favorite, because it’s so close to my story.
