"I asked you what you do / So you told me who you are"

Despite what I may have said in the past, I have only been left truly speechless once in my life. After attending a screening of Beyond the Call at the Tribeca Film Festival, I walked to Union Square to return a shirt at Filene's Basement. When I left the store, I walked into a peace rally march. I stood watching the march for literally ten minutes. A number of groups went by as I stood there: Veterans for Peace, Christians for Peace, Jews for Peace, and many groups from across the country made up of family members of soldiers killed in action and still in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A woman walked by on her own handing out black-and-white photos of soldiers killed overseas in clear, plastic sleeves. The woman standing next to me folded the picture she was handed and threw it in the trash. All along, people had been marching whileing holding sticks connected by strings. These same pictures hung off the strings.

I was just about to turn and walk away when I saw the word "Kansas" on one of the wooden poles. Until that moment, I hadn't realized that the photographs were arranged by state. The next thing I knew, there was Garrison's picture. Garrison was Kelzie's best friend's husband who was killed in Iraq a few months back.

I pushed my way through the crowd, kissed my open hand, and placed my hand on Garrison's picture. The man holding the Kansas pole said, "Did you know him?"

I started to say, "I only met him once," but the words literally caught in my throat and all I could do was nodd and struggle to keep the tears from eroding my face. I wanted to tell him about how Garrison joined the army to help orphans, how he planned to open an orphanage when his tour was over.

But none of this came out. My lungs pushed air up my wind pipe, my lips formed the first words, but nothing came out. For the first time I truly understood what it means to be "choked up with emotion."