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I’ve been thinking about all the wisdom the military will be losing in the coming years as the generation that fought the long wars leaves service. I’m sure DoD is compiling some notebooks, but I’ve heard of no effort to gather information on the best practices for families. 1/
I think there should be a book. Or a notebook. Or an app. Or something. We want to think we’ll never be in another long war, but we will. We want to hope that we won’t need some of this info again, but we will. 2/
For example, we have so many widows and Gold Star families around to share their advice. Are we capturing it? They’re going to move on and their memories will fade. But their experiences can help us do better for the next generation. 3/
I’ve been on a Care team since 2004, before it was even called that. I’ve led many Care team trainings. I know what I tell people to do & not do. But that advice has not been collected anywhere. Things like, put a big pack of toilet paper in your trunk. 4/
Sneak it into the widow’s bathroom. Her house will be full of visitors for the next couple of weeks & they’ll use her bathroom. When everyone is gone & she realizes she’s out of TP, she’s not going to feel up to going to the store. 5/
A widow friend shared that w/ me years ago, but it’s not in any Army casualty manual. And another—take breakfast food. Everyone always brings dinner. Being some cereal, something she can easily feed the kids. This is what you learn after 16 years of helping grieving families. 6/
But no one writes it down. 10 years from now I’ll be well into my next life & the widows will be in theirs. And there will be a new generation of grieving families who have to endure needless extra struggles simply because no one took the time to write this stuff down.
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