He was a marine in the Vietnam War. He came home with anger problems that left his 6-foot-8 boss in fear of him.
He spent 9 years in intense psychotherapy and for a 3-week period was committed to a psych ward for homicidal and suicidal tendencies.
He recounts memories from the war.
Running from a little girl asking for gum but hiding an explosive under her sackcloth clothing. Seconds later, flung on the ground covered in her body. Afterwards, relieving his stomach.
Plugging a hole in a man's chest with his thumb until help could arrive. Putting a tourniquet around a marines thighs after his legs were blown off from a trick-wire. Filling body bags.
After the war he was haunted by flashbacks. One night, he describes, he woke up holding his girlfriend's face to the mattress yelling for her to Stay down, stay down! Artillery fire! She thought she was going to die.
New Year's Eve fireworks found him trembling under his dinner table.
Us Vietnam vets, we have sayings, he said.
Don't make friends. Friends one day, dead tomorrow.
You know we're going to heaven because we've been to hell.
You can't even describe what we went through out there, he said. You can only know if you've been through it. Other military personnel from other wars can't even understand. Not fully. That's why us Vietnam vets, we have a certain bond that comes from the knowledge of what we endured.
Then there is me, in my pretty pink shirt, bob cut hair, eyes wide, face contorted in expressions of sadness, disgust, empathy. I have no idea what that kind of experience does to someone.
Here is a man who has experienced the worst of humanity and has come out the other side strong, yet vulnerable. He is vibrant, yet tired. Unsettled, yet peaceful.
Strong in character, vulnerable in body.
Vibrant in expression, tired in ability.
Unsettled with his disease, peaceful with his mortality.
He is tired of fighting and ready to give in to the disease that is slowly stealing his breath away.
All I want to do is grip his hands and say, You are incredible.
1 comment:
Very good writing Tennille. Thanks for really listening to him and sharing a bit of his story. Wish he would not have had to go to war. Glad he is peacful with his mortality.
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