This is a nice editorial about giving the press access to the caskets of fallen soldiers. As a journalist, I have always thought the American people should see those pictures. Now, as an Army wife, I feel even more strongly that they should.

I knew all too well about the anticipatory grief Ms. Burana writes about during Paul’s deployment. If something were to happen to my husband, I knew what I would say to the casualty officers who came to the house, who I would ask to speak at the funeral and, yes, which dress I would wear. It was my way of ensuring that should that horrible moment come – I would be able to handle it, because I had pre-made as many of the decisions as I could ahead of time. But in that situation, deciding whether journalists would be allowed at my husband’s service would not have been difficult. I would have welcomed them. Because after so many years of war, it’s too easy for the American people to forget that there are families paying that ultimate price on a daily basis. If my grief could have reminded someone of the sacrifice of so many military families, I would have shared it openly.

Opinion: A military family’s final right
By Lily Burana
for the Los Angeles Times

Eight years into the war on terror, military wives are aces at anticipatory grief. The possibility of loss was introduced so early in my marriage, it may as well have been an attendant at the wedding. Immediately after our brief predeployment ceremony at City Hall, my husband made sure I had our marriage certificate safely stored, as well as his will.

While he was at war, I mentally rehearsed his funeral a hundred times. And many of us Army wives, in the recesses of our closets, have stashed a black dress, just in case — if not for our own husband’s funeral, then someone else’s.

In the ongoing exercise of “what if,” wives and military families now have a policy change to consider.

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced the Pentagon’s decision to lift the complete ban on video and photos of the return of fallen troops to domestic soil. The ban, dating to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, covers the transfer of flag-draped caskets at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base, the first U.S. stop en route to the final resting place for deceased military personnel. Now it will be up to the families of the service members killed whether to allow the media to record what happens at Dover.

Gates asserts that the decision “should be made by those most directly affected, on an individual basis, by the families of the fallen. We ought not presume to make that decision in their place.” A recent poll indicated that two-thirds of

Americans are in favor of the change. 

Within my own circle of active-duty military and veterans’ wives, the numbers are little different. In fact, they’re in constant flux, as we hotly debate the issue. We go back and forth: Which side do you favor — the public’s right to know or your own right to privacy? Contrary to stereotype, we don’t move in Stepfordian lock step, and our opinions are as diverse as our ranks.

One acquaintance, favoring privacy, said that if the worst were to happen to her husband and someone wielding a camera dared to elbow in on her family’s grief, she’d “open up a can of Army wife whoop-ass.” When it comes to acting on behalf of our kin and the larger military family, make no mistake: Wives are warriors, too.

I get where the privacy-or-else camp is coming from. Though I could not have anticipated this when I married a soldier in 2002, I have come to care for troops and their families with a ferocity that words fail to elucidate. My instinct is to wave away onlookers, to protect, to defend. The civilian world, in particular the media, is justifiably suspect.

But as much as I relate to the protective stance of “No, you can’t come in,” I respect those who would welcome the media, saying, in essence, “Take him, he’s yours too. He is our country’s son.” In the name of honor and authenticity, I want the American people to see how the military respects its own, in aching ceremonial flourish, down to the last detail — caskets being carefully loaded on planes; the gun salute; the rap-tap-tap of the sticks on the snare drum rim, marking the cortege cadence in the graveyard.

Had my husband been killed in action, which route would I have chosen for his return were I given the chance — public or private? I can’t say for certain, but I’m grateful that military families now get to decide for themselves, a rare shot at agency in a way of life where so many choices — major and minor, life or death — are made for you.

When we discuss what any of us might choose, all I can do for now is weep at the specter of loss and listen. And that’s OK because for the moment, no one I know has to make such a decision.

I hope we never will.