Pangs of Conscience: A Soldier’s Regrets

It was an unseasonably warm autumn day, and the small funeral chapel was almost packed to capacity. Against the steady din of the air conditioning system, her soldier son stepped up to the podium. His gun was haphazardly slung over his back and his voice quivered with emotion as he began to deliver his eulogy.

“Mommy,” he cried softly, “I’m so sorry.”

His voice, at once poised and broken, echoed through the modest chapel.

“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you in the way that I wanted to be over the past few weeks and months. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be there with you when you were so sick.”

The crowd of mourners that filled the chapel listened closely as her soldier son bared his heart.

“Mommy,” he continued, “I was pulled in two completely different directions. On the one hand, I wanted to be at your side. I wanted to ease the pain. I wanted to show you that I cared so much.”

“But on the other hand,” he sobbed, “I felt a deep sense of responsibility for the Jewish people. I wanted to stand strong for the values that you taught me to live by. I wanted to do what I was trained to do and fight alongside the rest of my unit.”

“I wasn’t trying to turn my back on you, Mommy,” he declared through muffled sobs. “I was just trying to do what I needed to do. I was trying to do the right thing and defend my fellow Jews.”

“And even though you often told me that you were so proud of me and everything that I was doing in the army,” he concluded, “I still feel so sorry.”

And with these simple and piercing words, her soldier son finished speaking and slowly stepped away from the podium.

But his message, so authentic and sincere, continued to hang in the air for a long time.

Even after he went to rejoin the rest of his family and accompany his mother to her final resting place.

Even after they returned home to begin the seven-day mourning period.

Even after he exchanged his torn shirt for his olive-green uniform and went back his unit.

Because his personal dilemma and heartbreaking pangs of conscience go far beyond one family’s painful story. It brings into focus the dilemmas and decisions faced by so many soldiers and their ripple effect on relationships, families, and communities. And it makes a personal demand of us to be worthy of the choices they face and the dilemmas that pull at their heartstrings.

It’s not easy to champion absolute values in a world that often seems to have lost its way. It’s not easy to stand up for what you believe in when it demands so much from you. But sometimes raw emotion communicates the fiercest type of moral clarity. It reminds us of what’s at stake. It casts everything in a different light. And it illuminates our path forward as individuals and as a community.