End Note
My soldier, my son

By Marsha Gifford

It was time to say goodbye, and I struggled to match his courage. In the wave of new recruits, he was easy to spot. A full head taller than most stood my handsome, muscular recruit — my soldier, my son. We hugged long and tight. I told him how proud I was of him, but my heart desperately whispered, “NO! Please don’t go, Micah. I don’t want you in harm’s way.”

Telecasts for weeks, even months, had shown unprovoked atrocities in Iraq regarding innocent civilians kidnapped and beheaded by Al Qaeda terrorists. Micah’s predestined response of justice and mercy compelled him unquestionably to stand for right and against wrong. He believed he would make a difference and enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve and protect the innocent.

Micah graduated from Harding in May 2002 and joined his dad, Dale, and me as we were transitioning from a lifetime in Los Angeles to Northern California. He was the third son of a preacher man and our youngest. He decided to come help us out and readily became our youth minister. We were elated! He always made a big impact wherever he went. He was a dynamic youth worker. We were so proud of him, proud of what he could do and what he would do, and maybe most proud that he had come to be with us.

Micah was one of the funniest, cleverest, cutest and most optimistic people you might ever meet. He lit up a room whenever he entered. Everyone loved being around him and knew they could never have a better friend. (Well, anyway, that’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it!) He could be totally crazy one minute and in serious heart-to-heart counseling the next. He found humor in everything, or if it was missing, he concocted it. When you got past the laughs to the serious things, his spirituality was not only surprising but also refreshing and provocative. People loved talking to him because he was a great listener, had a good head for advising, and always found a way to be encouraging.

So this affable guy, two and a half years after joining the Army, flew in October 2006 from his base in Anchorage, Alaska, to Kuwait. He called home after three weeks to tell us his company was moving out, but he couldn’t disclose where. Sensing my uneasiness or maybe just because my name begins with “Mom,” he sent a huge bouquet of flowers from Kuwait with a note telling how proud he was to be my son.

How precious was that? Not everyone gets to say I love you before they die and send their mother flowers — an amazing blessing.

Three weeks later, his then-dried bouquet was still on my desk when a uniformed chaplain and Army sergeant rang our doorbell at 8 p.m. We live in the woods. The sight of those men standing there in the night air took our breath, our heart. They gently told us how Micah was killed on patrol in Baghdad, Dec. 7, 2006, when an improvised roadside bomb detonated.  

We buried Micah at Fort Rosecrans in San Diego a few days before Christmas. Memorials were held in Baghdad and at his base in Anchorage almost concurrently. In the weeks following we attended memorials in Redding, Calif., and on the Harding campus.

And now we’ve begun settling into the quiet times of “real life” in facing Micah’s death, as we knew they would come. It isn’t really that hard — except for that elephant sitting on me. I wish he would move. He’s really, really heavy. But then, even when I feel heavy laden — and I do — I have a Father to take it all to.

It is like when my little boys got injections. I remember their expressions: amazed at the pain but wide-eyed, filled with a curious terror, yet calm when they would catch my eye just beyond the doctor’s shoulder. That’s me now. Sad, but blessed, because just to the right of my pain, I’ve caught sight of my Father’s eyes saying it’s going to be all right.

That’s the courage I’d always needed to say goodbye to my soldier, my son.