No way to bury the grief at Arlington Cemetery's Section 60

ARLINGTON, Va. -- In Section 60, death remains too fresh to be separated from life.

You see it in the 17 cigars pushed into the grass near one headstone, signs that a combat unit stopped by.

And in the mother who spent winter afternoons wrapped in a sleeping bag, stretched across her son's grave.

And in the older man who reads Robert Frost to the dead, knowing their families live thousands of miles away.

In Section 60 are the graves of 336 men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan -- almost one in 10 of the dead. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have produced the highest percentage of burials at Arlington National Cemetery from any war. Section 60 is the one place to sense the immensity of the nation's loss.

The great expanse of the cemetery is known for its orderliness, its precision. Each Memorial Day, the government places a U.S. flag exactly one foot in front of every headstone. Only flowers are allowed on graves.

But in "60," life's messiness disrupts the order. Picnics are laid and incense burned. Red glass hearts are left atop headstones. Origami-style sheets of notebook paper are tucked away, safe from lawn-mower blades. Mothers and widows, friends and regretful exes write intimate notes, some as casual as a message stuck on a refrigerator door.

Here, the deaths haven't been absorbed fully. People talk to their dead. They still see their dead. "Somebody drives by," said Linda Bishop, a few feet from the grave site of her son Jeff, "and you think it's him. You see him." The phone rings, said Xiomara Mena Anderson, standing over the grave of her son Andy, and "I always think it's him."

Other parts of Arlington wear the dignified repose of old age and bygone eras. Section 60 reverberates with youth and immediacy. Visitors wear long sideburns and spiky hair, flip flops and eyelet skirts.

Even the names on the headstones sound youthful and vibrant: Megan, Jesse, Heath, Blake. The names seem better suited to text messaging -- LOL, BFF -- than to the abbreviated code of the graveyard -- CPL, BSM.

"I find a need to be there," said Teresa Arciola, who drives from New York's Westchester County every other month to place iPod earbuds on her son's grave and play for him the Temptations and Eminem. She brings him Black Forest gummy bears and, on his birthday, beer that she pours into the ground. She sits on his grave and reads aloud from his favorite baby book, "Corduroy." He had just turned 20.

"I feel good while I'm there," Arciola said. "But I don't think there's comfort."

One funeral, then another

The graves come quickly.

One mother visits the grave of her casualty officer, the man who was there for her when she first learned that her son had died in 2005.

Funerals require an extra level of choreography. Two were held May 16, back to back. By the time the first man was buried -- Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, a 34-year-old Marine known as the Lion of Fallujah -- the backhoe beside his grave had begun to dig for the next funeral. More than 50 mourners remained near Zembiec's grave site.

Some visited other graves. A Marine officer spent 20 minutes crisscrossing the section, stopping regularly.

And the backhoe continued to dig. Dirt scooped from the newest grave was used to finish burying the officer whose funeral had just ended. Rites for Army Spec. Matthew T. Bolar were to begin in an hour.

To stand at the edge of where the graves begin is to see exactly what the war has meant -- what has been lost, what has been sacrificed. The headstones' dark, black lettering seems to endlessly repeat the vague circumstances of each death: Operation Iraqi Freedom ... Operation Iraqi Freedom ... Operation Enduring Freedom ... Iraqi Freedom ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Enduring ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Enduring ... .

"Freedom is not free," say the hats and bracelets worn by some visitors to Section 60. And the rows of headstones -- from the just-dug graves back to those of World War II, Korea and Vietnam veterans who died of old age -- are stark, white reminders of how much that freedom has cost.

Graves spread in every direction, as orderly as crops in early June.

Although more than 300,000 veterans from every American war since the Revolution are buried at Arlington, the cemetery gained worldwide prominence after President Kennedy was laid to rest there in 1963. It is celebrated as sacred ground for military heroes.

Arciola recalls first visiting her son Michael after his 2005 death in Iraq. Arciola approached another mother and asked, "Does it get any better?"

Answered the woman, whose son had died about two years earlier, "No."

This is where grief, anger and pride come together. Children chase each other through the headstones. Their parents stand nearby, introducing themselves and exchanging e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

"They tell me they don't want to go to any more grief counselors or priests. They want to be with people who are going through hell themselves," said Carol Thomas, who stops by regularly and has befriended many regulars. Her husband is buried elsewhere in Arlington, and she sees the Iraq and Afghanistan war dead as "all my boys." She sees their mothers and fathers, widows, uncles, best friends and others as "my great friends."

In this place bordered by a canopy of trees, with distant church bells ringing like deep amens to a prayer and wind chimes sounding like a summertime back porch, mothers call to each other from afar: "How have you been?" "It's good to see you!" They hug and squeeze hands, saying silently what no one has to articulate.

"Has the Muslim family come today?" regular visitor Joyce Ward asked on Mother's Day.

"No. I haven't seen them," answered Anderson, whose eldest son died in Iraq last June. She misses him so completely that the words of his tombstone are repeated across the back left window of her sport-utility vehicle and on a bracelet she wears daily: "In loving memory of My Beloved Son Cpl. Andy D. Anderson." She has spent all day here, filling vases beside his gravestone with mums and daisies.

Anderson and Ward know what the other family is going through. Another woman nearby said, "The parents are having a tough time, aren't they?"

In May 2005, Beth Belle's son, Nicholas Kirven, was the first to be buried in a new row of graves. Two years later, five rows extend from his headstone. She is talking about the young man who stopped by earlier in the day, the one who still walked haltingly on his prosthesis and had a scar winding around his skull, the one who leaned over to see names on the newest graves, his arms hugging his chest.

"They come, and they cry," Belle said, describing the veterans she has watched and spoken with in the past two years. Only a week ago, she noticed a Marine hanging out at the grave of a young man buried two rows up from her son.

"He kept looking over at us," Belle said, before her sister replied, "I think he wants to talk to you. You should go over there." He had been back two days, Belle remembered, and he said, "This is the hardest thing for us to see -- the families."

As she talked, another young man kneeled beside Larry Philippon's grave, next to her son's. He started to cry. When he stood, Belle's husband said something to him, and he answered quickly, "I played lacrosse with Larry."

Another sentiment: guilt

When she was talking with the Marine, Belle continued, he became as emotional as the lacrosse player. He told her words she'd heard from others returning from battle, sentiments she doesn't share. "I let you down," he said. "We didn't bring your son back. I didn't do my job."

A man with thick, gray hair was reading to the fallen. Tom Gugliuzza-Smith took a break, picked up a watering can and small brush and visited every gravestone on the section's northern end, scrubbing off bird droppings. He has been visiting Section 60 since late 2004, when he stopped by a funeral and watched a gangly adolescent collapse over his father's casket. He has become, in effect, a stand-in for those who can't be there. He reads books sent by far-away families for their sons.

Down York Drive, the road that leads to Section 60, a tall, slender guy was walking fast. He had shaggy blond hair and Euro-fashionable clothes: dark shirt, skinny jeans, backpack. His stride was long, almost buoyant.

He threaded his way through the gravestones, slowing, then stopping at one that, 2 ½ weeks ago, was in the final row. A new row of freshly dug graves held seven headstones.

Sinking to his heels, this young man who, moments before, looked purposeful and almost brisk seemed to crumble. He reached toward the name etched into the gravestone. He sobbed.