It’s been almost a month since I boarded a plane in Damascus and headed for home after spending three weeks in the Middle East talking to Iraqi refugees. Back in New York, life caries on very much as it did before I left. The city movesat a lightening pace. Storefront windows get ready for the holidays. My friends call and ask me to the movies. It’s so easy to forget there is a war going on.

HadaYet I find I can’t get Hada* face out of my mind. A former English teacher in Baghdad and now single mother of four children, Hada’s been living in Damascus for three years. Her husband was injured in a car bombing back in Iraq that left half his face paralyzed, causing the family to flee to Syria to seek medical treatment and a safe place for him to recover.

About a year later, they got word that his mother was very ill and so her husband decided to go back to Iraq to see if he could help his mother or bring her with him back to Syria. It’s been over a year, and Hada’s had no news of her husband. All she knows is he disappeared somewhere on the road, on his way to Baghdad. She’s called relatives, police stations, hospitals…no one has any news.

What makes this story even more tragic was that six months after her husband went missing, her case came up for resettlement to Sweden with UNHCR. However, Hada wasn’t ready to give up hope that maybe her husband had only been arrested and might turn up, and worried that he would never find them if they moved to Sweden, she declined.

And now she waits for their case to come up again, this time acknowledging that if the offer comes to resettle, she’ll have to take it. She’s quietly terrified about how she’ll raise her children without a father and how she will manage everything alone, in a strange country.

She said, “I used to pretend to call their father on the phone and then say, ‘I’m on the phone right now with your father, and he says you better be good and listen to your mother!’” In the end, she knew she had to tell them. And now she knows that she must accept that her husband is gone forever, pick up the pieces of her life and move forward the best she can, one day at a time.

And then there is Billy Spencer, a 19 year old Marine from Ohio who was recently killed in Iraq. In a segment on The Today Show this morning, Billy’s parents talked about how incredibly proud they were of their son and how surprised they were to find out he had been making video journals of most of his time over there.

Through Billy’s videos, they were able to share their son’s final months and see first-hand what life on the front lines in Iraq is really like. They watched Billy talk to them from inside a tank, behind bullet proof glass. They also watched their son play with Iraqi children and remembered how Billy was always the first to reach out with a helping hand. Billy’s father said the videos allowed him to watch his boy turn into a man in front of his eyes. And in the end, the Spencer’s know that they must accept that their son is gone forever, pick up the pieces of their life and move forward the best they can, one day at a time.

These are the costs of war. I’m humbled by the bravery of people like Billy and Hada, who share their stories. I’m thankful for the many organizations that work hard to keep the war in America’s consciousness, to help our soldiers when they come home and to help Iraqis rebuild their lives. I know we have a lot more work to do.

*name has been changed.

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