No Protection
He stands in front of the shiny black wall, polished high
and long and filled with over 50,000 etched names. He stands and stares and I
pray that somehow I will know what he knows and see what he sees. That somehow
I can make sense of this.
But I know that is barely possible. Not now. Not at this age.
*
My father served our country in Vietnam. He was a poor white
boy, working as a mechanic, no college deferment, and in good health.
In other words, dispensable.
He was in Vietnam from early 1966 until mid-summer
1967. Some would say he didn’t see
the worst of it. But what is the
worst? He wrote letters to his mother assuring her that he was working the
radio in the office, far away from the fighting, not one of the guys on foot
stumbling through the jungles, huge packs on their weary backs, entering
villages to terrorize, all in the name of some elusive freedom. He was protected. Or so he said.
My father’s name was Daniel. He grew up in a small town in
Ohio, in a converted barn made into a house. Outdoor plumbing for much of his
life. Chickens in a coop. A mother who doted on him and his brother David and
father, a sister Karen who was like an additional arm to his mother. My grandparents were simple people, my
grandmother and Aunt Karen religious beyond reason. My grandfather a beer
lover. My Uncle David clearly in
love with every hot rod in town.
He was a mechanic, too, and never got drafted.
Late in life, my parents would purchase a beautiful old farm
house in the country. It had a wide front porch and was painted white with
green shutters. Every room had floorboards that creaked. Part of the character,
my mother would say. My father would die there with us by his side, on a sunny
Sunday afternoon in June, long shadows growing on the lawn, the brain cancer
finishing its job.
Caused by Agent Orange? Probably. No protection when you’re
there when the planes drop the deadly gel on all the vegetation in order to
flush out the enemy. The enemy that is so hard to find. The one my father
Daniel searched for far from the protection of some radio office.
He was always one to try to protect us from the truth of his
war – the one he fought until the day he died. He had no use for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He said he had already seen enough, and
he’d prefer to forget.
Although he couldn’t.
My father was always so contained. Unlike his cousin Ted who also served. Ted was a sniper
during the war, and spent a good part of his adult life drinking himself into
oblivion in his small apartment. My dad would state things simply when I asked
the hard questions, like Why is war so
hard to get over? Why was Uncle Ted
so sad?
The response that stuck with me: “Renee, Vietnam took part
of my soul. It took all of your Uncle Ted’s.”
Where do the soul’s go?
When I was in college, I heard this statement from Jean-Paul
Sartre: “When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.”
I thought of my dad. My uncle. The names of the men who were
on a wall in Washington D.C. Were they
the poor pawns in a rich man’s game?
A wall with names of men my dad knew. Names he never mentioned.
*
It took my dad nearly ten years after his return to get his
act together and marry my mother. They met at the Veteran’s Administration
where she worked the front desk. She saw Vets all day long. But she said there was something in my
dad’s eyes that caught her attention.
Maybe that piece of his soul that was still left? The only lucky one?
They married in 1976, and I came along in 1977.
In 1980, my beloved Uncle Dave died from testicular cancer.
He was just 33. I was too young to really know him, but the reaction of the
family for years afterward was a testament to the love they felt. They never
forgot. They brought him up constantly – how caring and beautiful and funny he
was. And it wasn’t hyperbole, from
what I can tell.
My brother David, born in 1982, was named for him.
And so it goes.
My mother often said that she didn’t know which was harder
on my dad: Vietnam or the loss of Dave.
It would make me cry.
And I only knew both from the stories of others.
*
My parents were good at shielding us as much as they could
from the realities of what my dad suffered. He was a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as many
Vets are. He saw it as a badge of shame – that he couldn’t be man enough some
how. No amount of assistance or therapy seemed to take that away.
But even with their so-called protection, we knew. We knew when to lie silently in our
rooms because dad needed the house quiet.
We knew that sometimes he heard things we didn’t hear. We knew that even if he was “well” for
a long time, anything could change at any time.
We were on high alert.
When I got to go away to college, it was a major
relief. I was also the first one
in the family to attend.
A lot was riding on me.
*
It was good to get a degree, but I left college ready for
marriage to a wonderful man I met there, and we started a family. Ryan is a joy to our family, as is
Emilia who followed. My parents
embraced being grandparents wholeheartedly. Family always meant the most to them.
My father in particular seemed….better. Maybe it was just time as a healer.
But maybe it was the growing tumor in his brain that helped
balance him out some way. The headaches had been there for a long time, so he
didn’t get much warning.
*
And now, three years after my father’s farewell to us, I
stand with my son Ryan at the Vietnam Wall. He is a junior in high school who
has set his sights on joining the military – a life choice I am not happy
about. He tells me, This isn’t the time of Vietnam and War is different now.
How? Just how his war “different”?
We stand at the wall together, and I can see him reflected
in the black marble. I can see the shape of his face is exactly like my dad’s,
and for a moment he is wearing the same fatigues my father wore, reflected
there like a mirror. I feel a
stream of tears trickle unexpectedly down my cheek. Will one day I look into Ryan’s eyes and see a piece missing? Will his future children be affected by
the grinding pain that never goes away, the pain of putting your life on the
line, killing in order to not be killed?
Or even worse – killing from a distance, like some exotic video game? ‘
What does this do to a person, the “war that isn’t war”?
Ryan turns to me, and there is no missing piece. Instead he, too, has tears in his
eyes. As we walk away he calmly
says, “I get it, mom.”
