So Much Left To Say

"One Memorial Day weekend, in 2007, I took my family to Arlington," photographer John Moore told LIFE.com, talking about this almost unbearable picture. "I went to photograph, but also just to visit, having covered so much war over the years. Mary McHugh had lost her fiancé, Sergeant Jimmy Regan, in February 2007 to a roadside bomb while he was in Iraq. She and I spoke about Jimmy, and about some of the places in Iraq he and I had both been, although we'd never met. Later, when I passed by her again, she lay stretched on the grave, softly speaking to the stone, as if whispering into Jimmy's ear, with so much left to say."