Veterans of the Vietnam War
I Love You Grandpa
On a warm end of May morning, I get up and go to my
community’s Vietnam Memorial. It is
nestled into the side of the mountains near the zoo and arboretum and Rose
Gardens. It tells the history of those days,
in Oregon, along with the names of the boys who died. We can see that while life was going along
here, young boys were dying in Southeast Asia.
We can read where they came from and how old they were. I walk slowly. It is early, but the walkway and stairs are
filled with veterans and family and friends.
I do not know these boys who died, but they were my generation. It was the war of my youth and so I go to say
hello and to say, I am so, so sorry.
In front of me a woman walks with three lively children who
carry hand written notes and flowers.
They stop midway up the steps and place their notes in front of a
name. The man they came to honor was only
18 when he died. He may have died before he ever even knew the baby who would
one day be the mother of these grandchildren who leave him a note that
reads, “We Love You Grandpa.”
He is forever 18. It
is the Rose Festival or there is a winning sports team or a natural disaster
but he is always 18 and lost in the small villages of a country he never wanted
to visit.
‘We Love You
Grandpa.”
Footprints
I am at a birth that has, as most births do, gone well. The
Mom has brought a sweet, baby girl into the world. Her husband sits behind her and holds his
wife as she pushes. He gives her sips of
water and whispers encouragement into her sweet smelling hair. Even after the birth, they stay there like
that watching the baby. We quietly, as
is our way, say our prayers of thanks and begin to clean small things. The placenta arrives and the baby makes her
way to the breast. The mother is
offered some sweet tea and grandparents tip toe in for a peak. In time the cord is cut and the Dad wiggles
out from behind his wife, stands and stretches. The medical equipment is put in
the other room and the pads are changed and clean beneath her. We tend to small details, smile and write in the chart. It is a time of rest and visiting.
The mother hands her baby to me and indicates she wants to
get up and wash; to let us change the sheets and maybe go sit in the living
room with the family. She asks if we
would weigh the baby so everyone can know and I begin to get out the
scale. My assistant helps her up. She is full of energy.
The father who is walking beside her falls to the floor and
begins to scream. He is hyper
ventilating and sobbing and screaming, “No, no.” His wife sits back on the bed and we go to
him.
He is pointing to the floor where they is a few tablespoons
of blood that he had walked in and left a footprint. He had looked back and seeing that was
reminded of the Vietnam War.
We had talked about the war, sometimes at prenatal visits
and about how he had struggled to recover after coming home. He was involved in Veterans issues and
healthcare. He was hoping this baby would
begin a new chapter.
In time the sobs grow quieter. “I did not want to kill him.” We say “We know” but we do not know. We have just helped this baby to be born. He is scaring us. He points to the footprint in the blood and
cries again. Quickly we wipe it up and
try to get him to look at his daughter; to watch as I weigh and measure her and
check her reflexes.
I can see that his wife and parents have been through this
many times before. We stay a long time
and wait for things to settle back into the peaceful rhythm of the
postpartum. We make sure everyone eats
and clean the sheets and tuck everyone back into a cozy bed.
He leaves his wife and baby to sleep and goes outside to
smoke. We watch him from the window as
he paces back and forth. We can never
know.
Sign by the freeway
I pull of the freeway and wait for the light to change. There is a man, about my age, who is holding
a sign. “Vietnam Vet needs money for a
room and food.”
Listening
When I am a school principal, I ask the middle school
students to find a veteran and ask them to share some stories with them. I invite grandparents, if they wish, to come
speak. A mother cries as she listens to
her own father tell about fighting in a war.
“He never told us anything. I
never understood.”
Everyone hates me
A man’s dog has a fight with another dog and he comes to ask
for my advice about the vet and doctor bills.
“Everyone hates me because I went to Vietnam.” I tell him no one knows this; that the people
involved were not even born then. “I did
not want to go.” I say I am sure that
is true and that there was a draft and no one blames him and that it is not
connected to the dog fight. ‘It was a
long time ago.” I say but I can see it
is still just yesterday.
Woodstock
Sometimes I see a poster of the sign advertising
Woodstock. It says Peace, Love and
Music. It was the Summer of 1979 and the
peace movement was increasingly asking itself how to eliminate, as the Quakers
would say, “the cause of war.” We were increasingly asking ourselves how we would not
just change the war but change the very fiber of a society that made the war
possible. In addition to music, we were
to learn skills needed for this new peaceful revolution. That is what I read when I headed that way.
The boys who attended Woodstock had escaped the draft.
They went to college or bought deferments That
was August of 1979 and they would not create the lottery until December.
In the days that
followed, I could see our peaceful revolution; our new society lost in a cloud
of drugs, fashion and the same desire to get rich with as little work as
possible, regardless of its impact on other countries. Woodstock and my generation never rebuilt
society. Small steps were taken by small
groups of people while others profited from the exploitation of the environment
and other global communities. The
Woodstock generation would go on to fund wars in Iraq, Pakistan and
Afganistan. There was a great deal of
boasting about how Woodstock proved our generation would end war and change
everything.
Of the 2,709,918 soldiers involved in the SE Asian war, 61%
were under 21. 11, 465 were under
20. They could have been at Woodstock, taking
drugs and listening to music but they were not.
Suicide
They say that 20 veterans kill themselves each day and most
are my age and fought in Vietnam.
NPR
On NPR they have a story about the veterans hospital in Los
Angeles. The reporter is saying they
were suppose to provide housing for veterans but they rented the land out
instead to private schools and businesses and never fixed up the housing. He is saying that someone made billions of
dollars and no one knows where it went.
It is Christmas and
the long ago John Lennon sings, “All we
are saying is give peace a chance.”
No comments:
Post a Comment