For my generation's midwestern families who bore the cost, one station of their cross likely was a kitchen table at which sit a mother and dad, not because they're hungry though they haven't eaten since early morning, but because it's familiar, where they'd always sat and talked, all of them, going all the way back to when the kids were kids. It's late into the night of the day they got word that a son was killed in service, and they're reading aloud his letters, all of which they'd kept, the frank hand-written "Free," citing now-recognizable place-names they'd never even imagined just six months ago, and almost always closing with the well-intentioned, if unavailing, counsel, "Don't worry."
