Numbers in Textbooks

I've always ignored the numbers in textbooks. (The ones I didn't have to memorize, anyway.) Things like this excerpt from Wikipedia: "Approximately 25,000 American Revolutionaries died during active military service."

25,000. Just a number. Numbers mean nothing.

Until Joe joined the Army. Then it became "25,000 men died"..."25,000 soldiers died"..."25,000 husbands died."

Those numbers catch my eye every single time now. Plaques in museums, articles on history - all full of numbers.

When I saw that Wiki page, all I could think of (despite the fact that, statistically, this isn't true,) is that there were 25,000 wives forced to temporarily lay down their dreams for their marriages who were never able to pick those dreams up again.

25,000 women who learned that their husbands had to leave them. 25,000 ways of coping with the panic of being separated from a mate...possibly permanently. So many tense, stifled last days together with so many plastic, manufactured, trying-to-be-happy moments - special last meals, special last kisses. Millions of different memories etched in 50,000 minds: of a sunny hour spent together smiling, laughing; a touch on a shoulder; the warmth of a breath; the feeling of being held; the sound of a heartbeat; the scent of security...each memory meant to be savored forever, but each fast fading as soon as it's captured.

Then: 50,000 first hours apart. 50,000 first days apart. Millions of moments unshared.

And 25,000 last breaths. 25,000 last I will love you forever's written at the end of 25,000 last letters.

I learned a lot of things when Joe joined the Army. One of them was that those numbers on the plaques and in the history books really do mean something.

But those numbers...you have to double them. It wasn't 25,000 lives lost, not 25,000 futures suddenly erased. It was 50,000.