Posted on 05/27/2006 6:50:12 PM PDT by kristinn
Memorial Day will be different this year at the Vacaville-Elmira Cemetery, where Casey Sheehan, a soldier from Vacaville, lies buried.
Until this week, more than two years after his death in Iraq, Casey's grave has been marked only by a small plaque. On Thursday, it received a headstone.
The elegant marble slab is thick and emblazoned with a cross and delicate thickets of trees on both sides.
"Our Casey," reads an inscription on the front. "Ever faithful, kind, and gentle, good son, beloved brother, brave soldier, dear friend, you loved your family and lived your life serving others to the end." Six icons grace the other side, representing a military insignia, the theater, Eagle Scouts, Van Halen, the World Wrestling Federation and Superman.
Also on the front are Casey's name and the dates of his life and death, which reveal an uncanny synchronicity. In addition to Memorial Day, Monday will also be Casey's birthday, the day on which he would have turned 27.
The installation of the headstone on Casey's grave is likely to get more notice than the vast majority of such installations. Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, has become a well-known anti-war activist since Casey's death, frequently in the spotlight in front of a highly divided crowd.
The absence of a headstone on Casey's grave became fodder for Sheehan's critics last year, who accused her of being negligent and disrespectful. Sheehan did not publicly respond for the first several months of such charges. But on April 10, she wrote a blog entry excoriating her critics and recounting the torturous experience of burying her son.
"I didn't want to put a tombstone on my son's grave," she wrote, capitalizing the letters of the word "tomb." "I didn't want one more marble proof that my son was dead."
For the first year after Casey died, wrote Sheehan in the entry, she referred to the place he was buried not as a cemetery, but as "Casey's Park." During that time she visited the cemetery nearly every day, she wrote, placing fresh flowers weekly on Casey's grave.
Sheehan also said that her estranged husband Patrick had taken on the responsibility of handling Casey's gravesite.
On Friday, Sheehan answered questions about the headstone via e-mail from Australia, where she has spent the week speaking out against the country's support of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.
Sheehan said she had paid for the tombstone herself and was part of a family effort to put it up, even though its installation saddened her.
"It is important for the rest of Casey's family to have one," she wrote Friday. "I guess the pain of seeing it etched in marble that he is dead is another pain I will have to deal with."
That pain, said Sheehan, stems from her belief that Casey should still be alive.
"I still feel he was killed for lies," she wrote.
The headstone was very expensive, Sheehan wrote. She said that the government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death. But Sheehan said money is not the main issue.
"It's about the lies that are still killing our children and innocent Iraqis," she wrote. "It's about unnecessary tombstones all over the world because of the Bush regime."
The new headstone on Casey's grave won't impact her relationship with her son, concluded Sheehan.
"Casey's shell lies in the grave in Vacaville," she wrote. "He is with me always and in the hearts of people all over the world who know his story and are working for peace."
Patrick Sheehan did not return phone calls by press time Friday.
I'm sure the news hounds will be there to bring us this groundbreaking story, live.
The headstone was very expensive, Sheehan wrote. She said that the government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death. But Sheehan said money is not the main issue.
The militry DOES offer a headstone, she apparently didn't want it....
She had fancy birkenstock bills and trips to Venezuela to kiss Hugo Chavez to pay for first. Casey's headstone could wait.
With all the hoopla and media circus, will someone please make sure Casey gets his flag for Memorial Day?
Or don't they mark every soldier's grave anymore?
I'd really love to know from some of Casey's friends what his relationship with his mother was really like...
Shell? She sounds like one of those wacky, Heaven's Gaters.
I was going to say something, but words fail me about this woman.
I respect Casey and thank him for his courage, service and sacrifice.
His mother,....don't get me started.
Huh? Isn't this supposed to be an adult's grave?
her time is up, maybe the article should have focused on Casey and not the traitor?
She will have a fit with the military insignia on it.
Casey's father arranged it.
I'll bet she didn't pay a dime toward it, made her ex-husband foot the whole bill. Of course, she'll take all the credit, and the media will never bother to report the facts.
It is an adult's grave it's just that his mother despite her age is not an adult.
I grieve with the family at the loss of a faithful and heroic son and know that the anguish it has caused has certainly impact6ed and effected all...but her reeasoning for all the delay indicates that it is all, once again, about her
Sad, pathetic wretch.
Good point.
If Casey Sheehan is looking down on this I'm sure that he resents him mother. I sure would.
Apparently it is just another piece of evidence pointing to the mother's disturbed mental state.
I suspect she's more comfortable remembering a child who liked Superman than an adult man who categorically rejected her anti-American values.
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