ewewish's blog: "Red White and Blue"

The sun broke over the mountain as he waited there in the brisk morning, so cold his breath showed on each exhale. He looked at the wonder around him as a deer walked out into the meadow. The steam rolling off the back of the large buck as he grazed on the dew topped grass. He watched as the deer gracefully picked his way to eat the ice frosted clover. He remembered as a boy how his father had taught him to hunt. He remembered back upon each season's kill and wondered now why he took such glory in it, when the glory, for him now, was to watch how graceful and beautiful these animals could be.

As his mind went back in time he thought about growing up poor with parents who worked so hard each day to put food on the table for him and the rest of the family. He is not sure that he ever thanked them for that but he knows that how he lived his life was in direct lines of how he was raised. Perhaps that was the way to show appreciation. He remembers the woodshed that father would take him and his brothers when they were bad. He smiled now thinking of his gentle father with tears running down his face as he spanked his boys for being bad. His mother was the true disciplinarian and her word was law and yet she had a gentleness about her that made people seek her out for advice and help. He remembers when his younger brother was killed and how mama and daddy cried, he was too young to understand death but he cried to as his parent's pain was so apparent.

He sat there and remembered the first time he saw her. It was the fifth grade and she was a new student. She had golden blond ringlets and a daisy dress and he fell in love. Everyone wanted to be her friend and due to his shyness he backed away from her, afraid she would reject his friendship. He remembers the day at recess as he sat on the stone wall by the school, just looking out at the field covered with wild flowers and dreaming of being anywhere but school, when she joined him and asked him if she could sit with him. From that day forward they were inseparable. He remembered after graduation, going to her house in his best set of clothes, ring in his pocket and scared out of his mind. He remembers getting down on his knee and before he could even ask her, she was jumping up and down screaming, "Yes, yes!" Her parents came out to see what was going on and suddenly everybody was hugging. To this day, he never did get a chance to ask her to be his wife, yet they did get married. He smiles when he rememberstheir wedding day and smiles even more when he thinks about their wedding night. They moved into a house that her dad owned and he got a job in the mines. He remembers how much he hated that job but it paid well. Soon he knew that he was going to be there for a long time when he found out that he was going to be a father. He had such dreams of going to college but his love for her was so much more important to him.

He remembers the day his son was born. It had been a tough delivery but there he sat with his son in his arms holding onto his wife's hand. He felt that nothing bad could ever come to them; how little he knew, when he thinks back on it now. The Vietnam War was raging on in the outside world and he remembers his innocence about thinking it would never reach him, it was so far away. He remembers coming home from work one night and finding her sitting at the table in tears. She was holding a piece of paper and when he walked through the door she flung her arms around him and cried her heart out. He gently pushed her out of his arms and walked over to the table and sat her down. He sat down and with shaking fingers picked up the letter she had been holding. He knew before he even picked it up what it was and as he read the tears fell down his face, he was being sent to that war that he always thought was to far off to touch him.

He thinks back to the day he kissed his wife and got on the bus. He thinks about how scared he was knowing that he may never see her again. He thinks back to the time he is in the jungle fighting and praying that he stays alive to return home to his wife and son. He prays that he will live to be home to hold the second child that he got notified was coming. He didn't want to leave them but he knew that he had a duty to his Country and at that moment it was a larger duty than to his family. He doesn't want to think about that horrible time there, the friends he had lost, the injuries he incurred. His mind goes back to the day he felt the pain before he heard the noise, he remembers laying there on that damp jungle forest floor and praying that God would protect his family. He remembers waking up in a helicopter with a medic hovering over him and telling him to hang on. The last thought he had before waking up in an Army Hospital was the sting of the morphine needle.

He thinks back to the day lying in that hospital when he was told he was headed home.

He had just received his third purple heart and he had done his duty. He remembers coming off that airplane on crutches and looking out at the people that were there. There had been horror stories coming across the ocean about how the returning soldiers were being called names and had stuff thrown at them. He remembers the anger when he had wondered how could the American people treat them like that, they were where they were sent to war by the government, it wasn't their choice and yet they were the ones that were treated so badly. Yet when he stepped down off the plane, there were only a few people standing there, one of which was his wife, and the rest was his family

He remembers holding his daughter for the first time, she is already walking and he has missed some important events in her and his young son's life. He vowed then to try and make up for that but he didn't realize until today that some things just can't be made up. He remembers the first night home and holding his wife close to him as they cuddle in bed, and later when she wakes him up from a nightmare that will return nightly for years to come. He is welcomed back to the mines and for everyone around him life continues, but for him he is still stuck in that world of fear.

Years go by and his children grow up. His drinking to bury the demons he carries has accelerated and it's his shame to remember showing up at his son's graduation drunk. He never does seem to capture that bond he had with his son prior to leaving for Vietnam and never really does gain closeness with his daughter although in his own defense he wanted to. Years continue traveling through his mind and he stops when he remembers his lovely wife telling him that now that the children are grown and in college she is leaving him. He is once again thrown into that world of fear as he realizes that she has just gotten to the point she won't tolerate his drinking and verbal abuse when he drinks anymore. He remembers begging her to stay, he will stop drinking, he will do whatever he needs to do to keep her but she has had her fill and she gets into her car and drives away with her suitcases in the trunk. He remembers wandering around the house wondering what he had done wrong that he was being punished for, he cursed the God that he use to pray to and he drank. Days later he finally woke up, hung over and decided that the only way he was going to get her back was to sober up. He threw out all the booze in the house and from that day forward he didn't touch a drop, even when the nightmares came he rode them out, he knew in his heart she would be back. He never realized until this moment how wrong his heart was.

He thinks back to a few months ago, when he hadn't been feeling well. He finally decided that he needed to go to the doctor and finally made an appointment with the VA clinic in his area. He starts thinking about the past week and walking his granddaughter down the aisle as she got married. He is grateful that even though his daughter and he never really got along, she never once stopped him from having a relationship with his granddaughter. It was his pride and privilege to escort her down the aisle to exchange vows with the young man she chose to spend her life with. His happiness that day was more than all the days added up since returning home from the war. Yesterday he recalls he sat in that VA clinic getting the results back from the tests they had done the week before and hearing the doctor tell him that he has cancer. An unforeseen side effect of Agent Orange. He can still hear the doctor's words as he told him "I am sorry sir, it is too far advanced to stop it. We have different things we could try to postpone it and give you time, but in the end I am afraid there isn't a cure"

He remembers walking away from the clinic, numb feeling. Decisions had to be made. He had written his will years previously prior to going to war and he saw no reason to change it now. He had never given her the life of happiness he had promised so he would leave her all his possessions. It would never be enough to make up for the years of hell he had put her through but maybe in time she could forgive him.

He sat there watching the sun that has finally topped over the mountain and thinks to himself, "I was killed in Vietnam, but my body never knew it." He leans back against the cold rock and closes his eyes. He was never to awake again.

The Glimpse

She knew the minute she stepped off the elevator there was something different today. The quietness of the nursing home was unusual and she felt sadness in the air. She went straight to his room as she usually did but he wasn't there. She sat the things down she had brought for him and went to the nurse's desk to find out if they had seen him. Angie, the nurse that she had become friends with over the last several years was standing there with tears in her eyes and just pointed to another room. Kev's room.

Kev was a man she had met only a few months before. He had returned home from Desert Storm with no problems until he got home. He started to get sick and come down with ailments. Some had still never diagnosed. They had no idea what he had that was making him sick. Each time she went to visit, she always stopped in to see him. He called her Ready. This started as a joke, she remembers. He said to her one day, "Hey beautiful, you want to run away with me?" and she said "Sure, I'm Ready." As time went on and they got to know each other, she would call him a couple times during the week just to check up on him and their friendship grew. She never missed a chance to visit with him when she went to the nursing home, and even introduced him to the man she was there to see originally. The two of them became good friends. A bonding between a Vietnam Vet and a Desert Storm Vet. A bonding between two men who both knew their time on earth wasn't going to be much longer.

She walked into the room and the man she had come to see was sitting by the bed holding Kev's hand. There were tears in his eyes as she leaned down to give him a kiss on the cheek. He whispered "Kev's parents have been called." She walked around the other side of the bed looking down at the young man who no longer resembled the picture of himself in uniform, that sat on his nightstand. She picked up his hand and smoothed back the hair with her other hand. His eyes opened and through cracked and dried lips he whispered, "I'm Ready". She laughed softly and said, "I think you are confused, Kev, I'm Ready. " He shook his head and said "No, this time I am ready. I have had enough of the pain. Enough of being trapped in a bed. I am just ready to go. Would you say a prayer for me?" She stood there, her eyes filled with tears, she was not ready to let her friend go. She wasn't ready to say good-bye, and yet she knew in her heart that she couldn't want him here either, not in the shape he was in. She reached down and kissed his forehead and looked deep into his eyes and said "Are you sure Kev?" He nodded his head. She closed her eyes and said, "Please, God, be merciful. Please give Kev what he needs. Amen" She couldn't pray to let him live, she couldn't pray for him to die. She knew she had to turn it over to God and accept what happened.

Minutes later, Kev's parents showed up, so she took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him back to his room. There they talked of Kev and of his dying. He told her he wasn't ready to die. She just nodded and said "Apparently God isn't ready for you to die yet either." About a half an hour later, Angie came in the room to tell them Kev had passed away. She got him settled in bed and they brought him in a sedative. When he was asleep, she stood there and looked down at him with tears in her eyes. Someday, they would be telling her the same thing about him.

On her drive back home, she thought about the friendship that she had built with Kev. She didn't question why God had brought him into her life, just grateful for the short time they had together. She thought about the year they sent her son to Iraq, barely 19 yrs old. She remembers how she shut herself off from the world then. She went to school, she went to work, and she watched the news of the war and cried. In that year, her marriage went down the drain, and she didn't even notice. She was so focused on her son and her feeling that she just knew he was never coming home. She remembers Thanksgiving weekend when they announced a boy from Minnesota had been killed and they were not going to release his name until family was notified. The horror of that weekend waiting for the phone call or the knock on the door, just knowing it was about her son. The relief she felt when he called her that Sunday night to tell her he was okay and that it was his best friend who died. Through all that she remembers that never once had she ever thought how she would feel if something happened to him. Today she got a glimpse.........

I wrote this for Memorial day for another site and thought I would post it here.

Red White and Blue