About 2 years ago my best male friend died suddenly. Everyone was devastated. To add to the devestation, his partner couldn't find a religious person to run the memorial service, which was important to him. It turns out even in So Cal, there are pastors who are happy to sit in a greiving man's home and tell him that the 27 years spent together was an abomination before God. Hate the sin, love the sinner I suppose. Because He's a loving God.

His partner decided that I needed to run the service and give the eulogy. He decided that M was telling him that I needed to do this for everyone. Me, the atheist, was suddenly responsible for the religious needs of 150 people. Because the service was a month after M's death, I had time to write. And I wrote. And practiced reading it every day because every time I read it, I fell apart.

At the service my boyfriend and best female friend sat in the front row in case I couldn't get thru it. I did, but barely. It was the first and only time I've read the entire eulogy and the sevice's closing without crying. I really don't remember much of the service because I was just trying to get thru it without laying on the floor and sobbing in big gulps. My heart was, and still is, broken.

I was deeply honored by J's request. This was what J decided needed to happen to homor and remember his partner. M would have been delighted by all the attention that day...

Now when my little brother died, writing his eulogy was very different. He was a monster for most of our lives, so we wound up writing facts and focusing on the good. We all knew the bad but this was the last time his story would be told and perhaps by telling the good, something better could happen.

At this safe distance, we can theorize all day about the cause and effect of why Bagdad is a mess. Riverbend is living that political theory - she and her family have lived the old Bagdid and in the new one. Her blog tells us what life is like for her and her extended family, what it was like before and why it's too dangerous to stay now.

If you read her entire blog - or buy her book - you would see that she initially liked the Americans. She felt sorry for the soldiers so far from home. She didn't like her nation invaded - who would, really - but she was sympathetic towards the invading force. That changed about a year ago. Enough was enough.

For us, it's a case of who's "right". For Riverbdend and her family, this is a flight for their lives. It's one thing to decide to relocate internationally, find a job, pack up and have an adventure. It's another thing entirely to find yourself in a country where going to the market or sending your children to school means risking death. Where the dinner conversation is about deciding if now is the time to leave or will it perhaps get better? What would better look like? How will we know if it's "better"?

You can disagree with the theories of "how" and "why", but her voice is telling you the "now", the realities of living in a place where several hundred people a day are killed because they went to the market for lemons. Is it "better" because only 20 people were killed today?

Regardless of your theories, you must take her descriptions as they are - writing the realities of her life in Bagdad.

Safe travel, Riverbend. May your heart and soul find a place to mend.

I travel a lot for work and the only way I can stand airport security is to make it a game - to see how much I can get thru. It's that or vibrate with rage thru the process, which will get me arrested.

When lighters weren't allowed, I discovered *no one* looks at a 45 year old woman's butt. I placed my smokes and lighter in the back pocket of my snug jeans and strolled thru security. Never got caught. Never.

Refusing to believe in the Magical Powers of the Ziplock Bag, I have several .5 ounce or smaller containers of lotion and eye drops in my purse and computer bag. Rarely are they confiscated, and when one has been, I've been told I can't take all of them, I have to pick one, in some bizarre Sophie's Choice for personal products. Hmmm, do I like the eye drops more or less then the lip gloss?

Watching the chaos of everyone unloading their bags in bus trays to get thru security, there is no way this is secure. Rather, we look like refugees trying to get on the last plane with our pitiful belongings before the Communists arrive and the city falls.

I've had my prescriptions stolen by the baggage people (I applaud the airline for finding another revenue stream to keep seat costs down), TSA has taken my TSA lock with no explanation but a note that they were in my bag at some point (good to know, I guess), I've had my bag come down the chute so destroyed my clothes were hanging out, I've had security want an explanation because the underwires in my bra made the hand-held wand buzz (I wound up with my blouse up around my neck to show the bra and offending underwires. *In the line.* Fortunately, it was my best black lacey bra but no one said later "Nice bra.")

I'm supposed to respect these people? I think not.