At first, meeting the other Gold Star Mothers, she had not known whether she would be able to find a friend. They seemed so different from her, with their gentle accents of the South and West, their nasal Eastern tones, their broken immigrant English. But, as the women unfolded themselves for the voyage, Wilma found they were all feeling the same exhilaration she felt: This is what the boys experienced, sailing over ten years ago. Now I can begin to understand.

And then she was standing at Chase’s grave amidst the long rows and columns of white crosses that stippled the luscious green grass. The sun was high in the summer blue sky. She traced the words on the cross. CHASE G. MICKELSON, USMC. JUNE, 1918. All around her, hunched women in their gray suits and cloche hats, clutching handbags, were finding the graves of their sons, dropping to their knees. Wilma had been the one to offer comfort to a poor woman from Virginia who collapsed at a grave near to Chasey’s.

I’m sorry for all I’ve done; I see you are at peace, she was finally able to say to her son, touching the cross to say good-bye. The bus that had borne the women to the cemetery was leaving, taking them to dinner. Life would continue. The mothers did not want to go, but they straightened their hats, brushed off their dresses. Managed teary-eyed smiles at one another, and linked arms, all of them, walking to the bus. At dinner, there was much wine, raucous laughter. Wilma yielded to the women’s demands and played a mazurka on the piano in the corner. The waiter finally had to come and ask them to quiet down.

On the voyage home, she and Josie Wokowski, from Pennsylvania, were lounging in deck chairs one evening after dinner when Josie, out of the blue, advised her to treasure her remaining children and her grandchildren, to make her life surround them instead of her grief. “But I was never meant to be a mother,” Wilma said, perhaps out of habit.

“But you are,” Josie said fiercely. “So God meant it.”

“God was punishing me, killing Chase.”

“But God blessed you with three other children. God let your other son survive the war, didn’t He?” Josie said.

At this, Wilma broke into sobs. Josie, unable to comfort her, finally patted her knee and left.

She must have sobbed for hours. When she finally felt it had all gone out of her, she sighed, and opened her eyes. The sun was just setting.

I’m still alive, she’d thought, with some wonder, resolving then and there to follow Josie’s advice. She would stop being so selfish. Stop dreaming of her music. Live a life devoid of unsavory passions, and control the surgings of her heart.