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Jean-Marie J. Crocker’s writing has focused on the aftermath of her son’s death in Vietnam. Her essays and poetry have appeared in North Atlantic Review, The Blue Cloud Quarterly, Blueline and Ball State’s Forum, among other publications. She and her husband live in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Posthumous Honor
Today
we received a medal
for our son.
Stoical and tearless,
we endured the formality,
then bore the medal home.
In my hand it is
startlingly small,
a well-intended offering
cruelly inadequate to
the measure of our loss
and raging love.
We set it by the picture of
our son in uniform,
that early image taken when
he smiled
in absolute belief and hope.