Fresh graves, grief at Arlington cemetery

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

You see it in the 17 cigars stuck into the grass near one headstone -- symbols of a combat unit that 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 that their relatives live thousands of miles away.

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In Section 60 are the graves of 336 servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan -- almost 1 in 10 of the dead from those wars. 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 get a sense of the immensity of the nation's loss. Nearly 1,000 US troops have died in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago, and 3,450 have died since the invasion began in March 2003.

The great expanse of the cemetery is known for its orderliness, its precision.

Each Memorial Day, the government places an American flag exactly one foot in front of every headstone. Only flowers are allowed on graves.

But in "60," the messiness of life disrupts the order. Picnics are laid and incense burned. Red glass hearts are left atop the headstones. Mothers and widows, friends and regretful exes leave notes, some as casual as messages stuck on a refrigerator door.

"I called your old cellphone the other day," says one note. "Someone named Brian has it now, and I couldn't help but wonder if he knew anything about you."

"It was so wonderful having lunch with you," another says. "Now that I know how easy it is to get here by Metro, I'll come by way more often."

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

Even the names on the headstones sound youthful, vibrant: Megan, Jesse, Heath, Blake.

"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 the Temptations and Eminem for him . She brings Black Forest gummy bears and, on his birthday, beer that she pours into the ground. At every visit, 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."

The deaths come quickly in Section 60, and the funerals require an extra level of choreography. Two were held recently , back to back. Overhead, thunderstorms threatened, the sky was the color of dark concrete, and the wind blew down flower arrangements.

By the time the first man was buried -- Major 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 gravesite an hour before the services were to begin for Army Specialist Matthew T. Bolar.

"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 the United States.

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

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 spoke 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.

Recently, she noticed a Marine hanging out at a grave two rows up from her son.

"He kept looking over at us," Belle said, until her sister finally told her, "I think he wants to talk to you. You should go over there."

The Marine had been back two days, Belle remembered, and he said, "This is the hardest thing for us to see -- the families."