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I don't like fish. I know eating fish is supposed to be healthy and prevent cancer, but if it's not fried shrimp I'd rather it be the dinner that got away.

Nevertheless, like spinach and liver, it tries hard to make a regular guest appearance on my dinner plate.

My wife knows I'll eat it if she cooks it, but she also knows that fish dinners at this chaplain's house have a mysterious way of coincidentally being interrupted by the beeping of my pager. My days as an Air Force chaplain were no different.

Late one Saturday afternoon, my wife signaled me to cease my yard work by waving my pager over her head. I let the mower die and read the page.

"Mortuary Affairs Office," I told her.

"Let me guess, I won't be cooking fish tonight?" she said.

"Don't slice the lemon just yet."

After a quick shower, I threw on my uniform and was on my way to meet with a death notification team. Composed of a lawyer, a chaplain, a medic, and a commander, the team seems more like the beginning of a Bob Hope joke. "There was a doctor, a lawyer and a priest driving down the street. … "

Only this was a jokeless script that read something like this:

"Are you Mrs. John E. Jones?"

"Yes."

"Is your husband Captain John E. Jones?"

"Yes."

"Ma'am, we regret to inform you that your husband Captain John E. Jones, SSN 555-55-5555, was killed."

Of course it's rare we ever get that far without a lot of sobbing and screams of denial, but we stay with the script until it's delivered.

As many times as we deliver the news, we always read from the script. It's the only way to get through without cracking. The goal is to be compassionate, but professional.

As our team formed at the Mortuary Affairs Office, we began practicing the script. Following that, we watched a refresher video on how to make the notification and mapped out a route.

Finally, after checking and rechecking our facts, we drove off in a dark blue Dodge sedan that took us into the heart of base housing

Uniforms in base housing on a weekend are a rare event. Young families are usually out playing catch, washing cars, or hosting garage sales. This afternoon was no different, but it was about to become permanently different for one resident.

The sudden appearance of uniforms in the cul-de-sac made us look like a small parade formation. We were a living, breathing cliché. It was all too predictable.

As we stepped out of our car, a little boy met us at the curb. He was just in time to point out his mother who was coming out of the garage wiping motor oil off her hands.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Suddenly she inhaled our presence.

"What's this about?"

"May we talk inside?" the commander asked.

"Come back later. This isn't a good time," she said.

"We're sorry ma'am, but we can't do that. Please, let us come in."

The commander's pained look sought permission to enter.

Permission was granted.

The commander started the script, but she refused to let him "regret" by pressing her hands tightly over her ears.

Eventually, we were able to tell the woman what had happened to her husband. The legal guy explained how her husband's body would come home and how someone would be there for every step.

The medic watched her for signs of fainting as I held her hand, read from the Scriptures, and led in a prayer.

The compassion was as real as it could be—even if it wasn't real.

For you see, on this occasion, it wasn't real. All the players were volunteer family actors taking part in a base exercise designed to get us ready for a worldwide deployment.

The predictability of the script gives breath to the fear known by every person who has ever served in the military. It is a fear reenacted hundreds of times in the mind of the service member and their families. Despite the fear, they go, they do their jobs, and most of them come home.

And yet some won't return—some like Marine Captain Ryan Anthony Beaupre, Army Sergeant George Edward Buggs, and Army Private First Class Lori Piestewa, whose families were among the first to receive such a visit after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March. It is in their memory, and in memory of their fallen comrades—indeed, in memory of all who have fallen in battle—that we pause on Memorial Day this year to honor the sacrifice of those who never wavered as they served. And we ask God to fill their surviving loved ones with his peace.

Frankly, I'd rather have eaten the fish than go on that practice exercise with my Mortuary Affairs colleagues. The exercise triggered many unpleasant flashbacks.

They were flashbacks of barking dogs protesting our late-night arrivals on moonlit porches. Flashbacks of contorted people blurred by screen doors that they refused to unlatch. Flashbacks of the midnight screams of spouses, children, and parents as they were informed of their new reality.

This exercise was much too real. It was exactly the way it happens every time—too much of the time.

We received a high grade on the exercise, and I suppose that was good because the next visit we made was a real one.

We had to interrupt a little boy's birthday party to do it, but we did. As our team turned away partygoers on the doorstep, the commander began his script.

"Ma'am we regret to inform you. … "

Norris Burkes, formerly a military chaplain, is now a hospital chaplain at the Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, California.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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