But I was particularly moved by one brief, silent moment in which an elderly Iraqi woman appeared, swathed in black, standing alone atop a small mountain of concrete rubble. Alternately she would bend down, pick up a piece of debris, and heave it aimlessly away, as if she knew her salvage efforts were futile but would not be deterred from this rite of grieving, this terrible labor of love. Then she would bend her head back and raise her arms toward the heavens in noiseless wailing. History tells the story again and again. Even now, here, in our country, in our lives, we wonder.
Families can t find homes.
Adults lie awake wondering if they can hang on to their jobs, their marriages, their sanity. Others fall asleep only to be plagued by nightmares of past memories and future fears. Elderly lie in institutions, lonely. Prisoners wait in jails, forgotten. Children go to schools that are understaffed, underfunded, without qualified teachers.