This is an incredibly poingant story about a young soldier 21 years old who is a Veteran we should honor on Memorial Day. Here's Elizabeth Nicole Jacobson story:
`I want to die happy and have a productive life. I hope nobody wishes I was never born. I hope my kids never tell me they wish I was like their friend's mom. I hope that I make money, but don't end up a workaholic or stuck up.'' (email from Elizabeth)
Her messages were never meant to be epitaphs.
In January, The Cincinnati Inquirer published a feature story about an Ohio doctor, a reserve major with the 344th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq. It began: ``David Grundy carries a tiny news clipping in his wallet, an obituary for Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Nicole Jacobson, who was 21 when she died in Iraq on Sept. 28.
``Grundy saw her in the emergency room on the first day of his second deployment to the war zone. Jacobson already was dead, killed instantly when a roadside bomb hit the convoy she was escorting.
``Something about that death, compared with all the others he witnessed, stuck with Grundy.''
Something about that death, and stories about her loss in The Miami Herald and The Palm Beach Post, stuck with me. I stopped by Forest Lawn Thursday and brought a sprig of bougainvillea and a pink hibiscus from my own garden. The flowers were offered as an apology.
I'm sorry. I didn't think, back when I and so many others too old to fight acquiesced to this war, when I didn't scream objections, that a schoolgirl from Riveria Beach would be killed there in the fall of 2005. And I didn't think kids would still be dying in the summer of 2006.
