That Marine’s Christmas stocking I forgot to hang

Iforgot. Again. The phone message from the woman with a soft, almost whispering voice said, “Mr. Montini, I’m wondering if you’ve had a chance to hang up my son’s Christmas stocking. Not at home, of course. But maybe somewhere in your office? You’ve mentioned it before in columns so I thought I’d ask. Anyway, have a blessed holiday. I hope your family is well.” She didn’t leave a name. She didn’t need to. I reached into the file cabinet under my desk. It was there. Damn. I’d forgotten. Again. In the middle of the summer a few years ago an envelope arrived at my office that had inside it a Christmas stocking and a brief, unsigned note.

The stocking was made of brown and tan military-style camouflage material and had “U.S. Marines” stitched onto it in red.

The note read: “We were going to give this to our son when he returned from his most recent tour. But he died over there. You mentioned him in a column a while back with the names of others who were lost. Thanks for that. Don’t forget them.” It was signed, “A Marine’s mom.” I hung the stocking at my desk. I shouldn’t have needed the reminder. I’ve been getting messages from moms like this for over a decade. None lately, of course. Thank God. And because of that, because those of us not impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have the ability to move on, because we are obsessed with things like the presidential elections and … ourselves, we forget.

I forget.

Back in 2006 I got a call on my answering machine from a woman named Tina Armijo. She told me she appreciated an article I had done that mentioned her son, Spc. Santos R. Armijo, who was killed in Taji, Iraq that October.

Her son was called “Bear.” He was scheduled to return home the month he died. He lived in Texas and his mother had promised him that she would visit him there.

“Our plan was for me to go there for Christmas and spend time with him,” she told me. “But I’m going now. I’ll get to see where he lived and where he worked.”

Since 2003 I’ve mentioned and written about and forgotten too many young people like this, and too many of their parents, for whom Christmas will never be the same. It’s the same for us, of course. We’ve moved on. For us moving on is easy.

For them, not so much. Not at all.

More than 10 years ago I got an email from a woman named Marcie Biskie. She told me at the time that she’d only recently read a column I’d written back then in which I printed the names of everyone with ties to Arizona who had died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“My husband was Sgt. Benjamin W. Biskie Sr., listed in your article,” she wrote. “His favorite part of his job was spending time in the Iraqi population, talking with them, exchanging stories, learning about them. But for him, the best part was the kids. I have many pictures of him with the children he met with each time he went out. He would take pictures for families, since they have no cameras, send the film to me to develop, and I would send them back so he could give them pictures of themselves.” Biskie died on Christmas Eve 2003. At the end of her note Marcie Biskie, who signed her correspondence as the “proud widow” of Sgt. Benjamin W. Biskie Sr., wrote, “It sometimes seems that no one remembers.”