The Gold Star Mother
“Dear Mom, Dad, Billy and Baby Sis,
It’s rough out here but I’m with some great guys. We look after each
other, so mom, I’m well taken care of. Believe it or not, there’s no
place I’d rather be. I finally found the place where friendship is
everything and money is nothing. I will be a Marine for the rest of
my life…”
Our little country church is dim and still
I sit and pray for strength to bear God’s will.
A gentle voice consoles me while I pray
“It’s OK Mom, we’ll meet again one day.”
I see a pew where once a proud Marine
Would hold the baby sis he called “the Queen”
Today the pews were full, the soldiers stood
Along the walls, so young, so tall, so good
The people lined the streets as we drove by
The tears welled up and I began to cry
If only I could thank them all I’d say
He’d want to shake each hand, that was his way
The bugles, drums, the Honor Guard, the grave
It’s all a blur except this flag they gave
I hold it to my heart and then I sigh
His father waits. It’s time to say goodbye
A shining marble slab stands on the grass
My dear boy’s face is smiling in the glass
A tribute to a nation, great and just
While we who live endure, in God we trust.
Gerard Maritato a retired family physician currently teaching literature at the high school level. He is an Army veteran from a proud American family of Italian descent, both sides of which have served in four wars. He lives in Tennessee.
I don’t know how anyone could read this without tears. It’s just beautiful.
Thank you Cynthia. We have many tears for these boys and those who mourn them.
Gerry
Brilliant Gerard, brillant.
I studied lietrature at University and made the mistake of choosing almost exclusively options from the 20th C..
Those who put together the syllabus were extraordinarily committed to deconstructing everything that moved and indeed everything that didn’t. No celebration of joy, duty or the virtues but instead the elevation of nihilists
and the glorification of those who took their own lives.
It was profoundly disorientating and depressing.
So many contemporary writers are either in the same veing or mawkishly and mindlessly sentimental.
Your poem returns to that fine balance which expresses genuine sentiment in plain language
about things that really happen..both the terror and the joy.
I look around England now and see that just about all men of fighting age are either teetering on high heels
and worrying if their clothes and make-up look nice or slumped in front of a screen killing zombies, which process
achieves nothing but rendering them incapable of any genuine connection with fellow human beings or indeed any practical task. The small few who buck this disturbing trend tend to be from farming families in which sanity
and the virtues including constancy, hard work, providence and prudence, planning for generations to come, doing a decent day’s work for a decent day’s pay, love of spouses and children, temperance, caring for kin, hope and faith, mostly prevail .
G.K Chesterton remarked that a good soldier is less motivated by what he hates ahead than by what he loves at home.
Such ones as these young farmers will be the only ones to have a chance of surviving .. both spiritually and physically what comes next.
In God we trust.
Bless you,
Karen in Cambridge, UK
Thank you Karen. I agree completely with your take on current writers. Once the New England Journal of Medicine had a short story contest. They got such negative feedback because of the wokie doke rubbish they published that they never offered the contest again. This website is a refreshing counterpoint.
I can reassure you that they can cancel culture all they want but they can’t cancel anthropology: masculinity, that is men who protect and serve with courage and endurance is alive and well.
Cheers and best wishes,
Gerry
Thanks Gerry,
Nick Dixon says it in one line;
Publishing Censorship Has Gone Insane
https://www.nickreads.com/p/publishing-censorship-has-gone-insane
>they can cancel culture all they want but they can’t cancel anthropology: masculinity, that is men who protect and serve with courage and endurance is alive and well.
I am fervently hoping that the few young men and women who are left who understand how they are being duped to their detriment, refuse to be kept in the mental bunker they have been corraled into and read G.K Chesterton, C.S Lewis J.R.R Tolkien and contemporary writers like you, MIchael D O’Brien , Frank Haviland and the wonderful Freya India.
Bless you all,
Karen
Frank Haviland
“When I first became a dad, a close friend of mine confided in me how glad she was that I was now ‘living properly’. I was a little offended at first, but now I think I know what she meant. I feel genuinely sorry for those men who may never get the chance to be fathers, and to enjoy their Railway Children moments (as I am about to do). I also pity the children who are no longer being told these timeless stories; they may never know what they’re missing. ”
https://frankhaviland.substack.com/p/the-shameless-joys-of-fatherhood
https://frankhaviland.substack.com/
Jack Watson
“Free speech matters. Without it, we won’t just stop debating important issues – we’re less likely to arrive at the truth about those issues, or at least a settled consensus. If you can’t question things in school, where can you?”
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/04/18/the-free-speech-crisis-spreads-to-schools/
https://dailysceptic.org/author/jack-watson/
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/22/im-trying-to-get-ready-for-my-gcses-but-my-school-keeps-distracting-me-with-lessons-on-multiculturalism-racism-mutual-respect-and-the-merits-of-mass-immigration/
https://jackwatson.substack.com/
“[Girls] are literally just an object to be sold..
….You have no language to object ”
Freya India
Feminism Taught Gen Z Women to Fear Relationships |
Video 3 minutes;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbJbwaUB5YM
Gerry, I echo Cynthia’s comment above. And I’m intrigued about the opening snippet from the letter. Is it from a real one? I see the line in your bio about 4 different wars and imagine quite a few letters going back and forth.
Hi Rachel,
Thank you for the reply. The snippet above is a compilation from several young men killed in action whom we know. The main themes of the poem are based on a 21 year old career Marine and his religious, patriotic family.
My older relatives experienced such prolonged combat and unimaginable horrors that they didn’t write or talk much until they were much older.
On a more positive note, my son is alive and well after Afghanistan. He said that email is one thing, but getting a letter is like Christmas!
Cheers,
Gerry
Ah! I’m sorry to hear about the losses! I think I know what you mean about the letters. We have my grandfather’s letters from World War II. He never wrote about the awful things he went through, only how wonderful it was to get mail from home about normal everyday things. In 200 pages, there are 1-2 lines about combat; all the rest is people and farm issues and small town talk. Thank God he came through everything safe. And I’m glad you and your son have too!
Rachel I should add that in my bio I may have implied some stolen valor. In my own seven years of active duty I did nothing special and was never in harm’s way, as several in my family were. Not intentional!
Gerry
Ooh that sounds too rough. I mean that it was not intentional and I should have included that in my bio. Excuse the exclamation point.
Gerry
Gerry, your bio looks great to me! I didn’t think you implied anything misleading. On the same note, I appreciate that it was clear from the start of the poem that you yourself weren’t the gold-star mother speaking in the first person. The reader sees right away that the exercise is imaginative. The poem would have been more open to misunderstanding if you’d adopted the father’s or brother’s voice, or if your pen name were feminine. You’re at the right poetic distance: close enough to the tragedy to see and feel, but far enough to convey it meaningfully to the rest of us.
Gerard, this is a deeply felt heart-rending poem that happens all to frequently, but with honor and respect for those who gave their lives in service to our country. Beautifully said and deeply appreciated.
Thank you Roy. Many blessings to you.
Gerard
Thank you for this lovely poem. The structure is 5 stanzas of 10 exact masculine-rhyme heroic couplets. The iambic pentameter is regular, with no metrical substitutions. The speaker is the mother of a young marine killed in action, presumably in an overseas war zone. There is an epigraph before the beginning of the poem—a quote from a letter her dead son wrote home when he was still alive, stationed in that war zone.
I love the simple dignity of the language in this heartfelt poem. The poem builds to genuine emotion (not Hallmark-sappy, but the real thing). I find myself in tears. There is a family living down the block from me whose 23 year old son was killed in action in Afghanistan. So this situation is up-close-and-personal for me. And I’m reminded: I haven’t expressed my gratitude nearly enough to our courageous soldiers and their families.
One small technical point/question. In the first 3 couplets, the mother is sitting in the pews of her church. In couplets 4 through 8, she recalls the funeral and graveside service that took place earlier in the day. She holds the flag that was given to her at that service. Her husband waits for her, and “It’s time to say goodbye.” (Line 16) But in the last stanza of 2 couplets (lines 17-20), has she returned to the graveside? Or is the description of the grave in lines 17-18 part of a general philosophical “summary” given to us in lines 19-20? It’s unclear to me.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane (Myers)
Thank you Mary Jane for your edifying feedback. As you know, I meant to convey the mother sitting in her darkened, empty church recalling her son and the long day’s events.
Her husband was waiting respectfully outside, giving her space so that she could say goodbye to her son when she was ready. “It’s time to say goodbye” while her husband waits may suggest that she has a duty to her family as well in this tragedy. Then she leaves the church.
It’s true, I didn’t make that clear.
The transition to the last stanza was not clean enough. The family built a monument to their son including a tribute to our country (how selfless and generous) in a park where he played baseball.
I couldn’t find a way to fit all that and be faithful to rhyme and meter. A common problem for us all! Adding another stanza to expand that, I thought, would diminish the impact of the mother.
It’s important for me to note that in my own seven years of active duty I did nothing special and was never in harm’s way. I think I implied some stolen valor there!
Again thanks and blessings,
Gerry
Without much description of emotion, Gerard, you manage to suggest a long life full of it to readers. The Gold Star mother didn’t go over memories only on the day of the funeral! This perspective comes to me because my family kept a World War II gold star for many years after the funeral and the war were over. As a child, I had to ask what it was. I can’t remember if I heard my great aunt (our Gold Star mother) speak of her son. Yet the experience you honor and memorialize eighty years later brings it back to life.
Well described Margaret. Thank you for sharing your observations and experience. The old adage: “You don’t get over it, you just get used to it” doesn’t apply to gold star parents. They never get over it and they never get used to it.
Blessings to you,
Gerard
Very proud of your poem writing Dad! Proud to be descended from a family of military heroes and healthcare heroes. Love you! Can’t wait to read the next one.