Cry, cry, cry

I was flipping through the channels last night - approximately 80 percent of which are showing reruns of every conceivable incarnation of the Law and Order franchise - when I came across an HBO documentary called "Last Letters Home," in which moms and dads and spouses read the last letters their loved ones wrote before they were killed in action in Iraq.

I've never seen or heard anything so unbearably heartbreaking. If you can watch this without crying, you've somehow checked your humanity at the door. Fathers break down as their sons write how much they love them. Wives tell how they refused to let the soldiers charged with bringing the news into their home, because as long as the bad news wasn't said out loud, it wasn't real and didn't happen.

There was a soldier who wrote a letter to his family to be opened if he died. He writes to his little boy, "Dream of our park and I'll be always be there.'' It was unbearable, but I couldn't change the channel. It seemed disrepectful somehow. The website for this program is http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/lastlettershome/