I picked up my date for the service only a few minutes late. I did not want to keep him waiting, but had to stop by the office to retrieve the phone I had left next to the keyboard when I fled the office on Friday.

My date was Mac- he is still a little wobbly as he recovers from something a little like pneumonia, but he is progressing nicely, and is just reluctant to walk too many steps, or climb too many stairs. He was tempted to not attend the service, but I volunteered to drive and pick him up at The Madison with plenty of time to get out to Leesburg, to the St. James Episcopal Church on Cornwall Street.

Kurt’s memorial is the second event in the trinity that will see him to the next world. The first was the event, of course, the second being the high church ceremony to mark his passing, and the third the internment at Arlington. Military funerals these days, like that of my pals Rex and John, are of necessity in two installments. The Old Guard who defend the gardens of stone, and who see the warriors to their rest are a busy lot, and there is a wait between the necessary closure of the service and the physical internment of the remains.

There may be a time for healing in there, someplace, though this is as bad as it gets for the family.

Mac enjoyed the drive, and it was a fine day for it. The precision German machine hugged the highway as we roared through the construction zone for the new Metro extension to Dulles, and out the Access Road and eventually onto the Greenway to Leesburg. Loudoun County is now an exclusive bedroom enclave for the capital, and the quaint old center of Leesburg was jammed with gawkers and weekend day-trippers.

We were in somber dark suits and ties, in stark contrast to the wanderers. We were on a mission, and it is one that you ought to think about joining.

We rolled up to Saint James Episcopal Church in plenty of time for the service. I let Mac out of the Hubrismobile so he did not have to walk far, and tucked the car up the block before walking back.

It was funny, I thought. The last time I had been in St. James was with Kurt’s father for the memorial for Bill Hatch, one of Mac’s old friends. He had been a long time daily-farmer-cum-naval officer who drove Rt. Seven each day to arrive at seven in the morning. After milking the cows, no less.

There was a marked difference in this ceremony, though. Bill had a long life, and a full one. Kurt’s ended suddenly. He had died in the bomb-blast detonated by the cowards in Iraq. Kurt survived it only temporarily, and was tortured by severe Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

He took his own life two weeks ago, unable to cope with the demons that had been loosed on his consciousness with the force of the blast. Like thousands of other young men and women we have sent overseas to fight for us. Like them, Kurt was a Wounded Warrior.

The church was packed with people in uniform and in mufti. Mac and I sat under the personal flag of General of the Army George C. Marshall, a parishioner of St. James when he was not winning America’s wars or rebuilding a ravaged Europe.

I am not much for organized religion, but as a Catholic observed to me, the high-church flavor of the Episcopal rite harked back to the Catholic services of his youth. Kurt’s cremains were brought solemnly into the church borne by two sailors, and the service of The Burial of the Dead and A Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the Life of Captain (Select) Kurt William Juengling began.

The ceremony was almost overwhelming in its grace and time-polished majesty.

“I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me, though he die, Yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

That is John 11:25-26, I found, and that is how the service  began. It is an Easter liturgy, one of hope of the resurrection. The triumphal message is intended to blunt the grief, and even as irreligious a guy like me had tears streaming at the strains of Amazing Grace and Eternal Father.

There were good words spoken, of healing and the certainly that his battle is done, and he is at peace. Kurt will be sorely missed by his friends, but most by his wife and his children and his parents. The kids looked a little lost at it all, and his mother’s eyes were filled with red with crying.

The Celebrant had a few words outside those stipulated in the liturgy. He reminded us that Kurt was a combat casualty, who ultimately died of his wounds. There are many others who face the same daunting challenge. Those who have not been cognitively damaged have had pieces of them blown apart. We need to be there for them. I set up an allotment this morning.

It is not enough, but it is something that Kurt’s parents support, and now so do I.

You might want to think about a contribution. Our kids deserve it:

Wounded Warriors Project
www.wounded warriorproect.org
PO Box 758517
Topeka, KS 66675-8517
1-877-832-6997

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com