Dear Little Brother…
Where would you be now, if you hadn’t died in Nam?
What kind of life would you have now, at age 59, especially if you had escaped our old cramped small town world as I finally did, and found the freedom to be who you always were, in an open and afffirming city.
I love imagining you still here, as the professional chef you always yearned to be, probably happily partnered with a good man, and having raised a few kids of your own, given your deep love of children. I love thinking how good it would feel to have you in my life now, my great big gentle teddy bear of a brother,who would always be there to laugh with and love.
They never gave you the chance to grow up. They got ahold of you almost before you were out of diapers, and filled you to the brim with dreams of being a soldier like your father. They laced your pablum with potent patriotism so you would grow up a “real man”, strong and ready to fight for your country, no matter what it asked of you, with never a question asked.
So you proudly went to war. How handsome you were in your crisp uniform, how straight your back, how proud you were to have made it at last. You were the man your father wanted you to be. And how dead you were, three weeks after reaching the swamps of Nam.
Losing you was enough of a horror. Getting your single letter, after your death, telling me you had seen the worse of the worst of what war can do, and that it had broken your heart, was somehow worse. If only you could have died still believing in the goodness of your mission.
Ah, it was all so long ago. Why does it still hurt so? I accept your absence now, but I have never accepted the betrayal you had to endure in the last days of your life.
My rage at those who so lightly sacrificed your life has never faded, and now burns hotter than ever, as I am forced every to witness the proof that we learned NOTHING from Nam, NOTHING.
I’ve fought against becoming bitter for such a long time, to choose in stead to embrace hope that we could become better as a nation, than we were then.
But now there’s Haditha to add to the gory list of atrocities of war being experienced again. by all the human beings caught in the midst of this created hell. Other young men and women just like you, Jer, caught up, along with the innocents, in an escalating spiral of horror that dehumanizes and destroys everyone involved.
There’s always, it seems, a “final straw”, and the Haditha news was it for me. Families can have flashbacks too.
Sometimes lately, watching the news, for brief moments, I can’t tell if it’s 2006 or 1966. I’ve had to stop participating in the Iraq Daily WItness diaries, because it got to be too painful. The other day I went to pick up the mail and found myself thinking, “Oh please, don’t let that letter from Jerry be there.”
This is not because I failed to complete the process of mourning you, or letting you go. It is because of what is happening right now, today, in reality, that is just to close a match for me to ignore, or to “rise above” all of the time.
And I have to ask, if it is affecting me this much, as the sister of a Nam vet..what in the HELL is it doing to the vets who were there living it all, and DID come home? It makes me want to gather them all up in my arms to held them feel safe, and I am.
To all of the vets who are reading this, I embrace you with my heart not only for your service, but for the incredible courage I know it has taken to go on living after being there.
To all families of all colors all over the globe, who have lost loved ones to the horrors of war, and know the helpless anguish of having nothing you could do to stop any of it…I also extend my heart space to embrace you all. Our tears flow into the same river.
Maybe someday, we’ll learn how to choose leaders wise and strong enough to choose peace over war. Maybe someday there will be another way.
For now, we must get through this as best we can. We must honor those we’ve lost, take care of those who survived, and share strength with those who grieve.
We must do out best to accept and live with, yet not succumb to the damages inflicted by war, so we can continue to stand testament to the need to find a way to end it someday.
May we all be given the power, support and sustenance needed to go on toward the light of potential peace.
