Christie Deals With "Is It Worth It?"

The Globe's Christie Blatchford looks at the charitable efforts of Maureen Eykelenboom—mother of Cpl. Andrew Eykelenboom, a Canadian medic killed in Afghanistan in 2006—whose organization has so far donated $128,000 to the Assistance to Afghanistan fund. Blatchford's impression has always been of a "resolutely composed" woman, "seeming if not quite cheerful, always sanguine." But after a recent trip to Afghanistan to view the fruits of her and her son's labour, Blatchford reports Eykelenboom finally became "alive to the enormity of her loss and the grief she had kept at bay with the work and travel." After all, Blatchford notes, for her and other parents of fallen soldiers, the question of "is it worth it?" takes on a particular poignancy.