The Heroics of Being Alive, Part 2

We Conclude Our Memorial Day Meditation

Author’s Note: Friends, over the course of the past four or five years, I’ve made a point of adding or updating an essay about my father’s military service and posting it around Memorial Day. What began as a short remembrance of my dad, who was a reluctant soldier, has grown substantially. I add to it each year, including this year. Despite its expanding, I fear we still haven’t come to any conclusions. But we’ll keep trying, if for no other reason then because my father deeply disliked being a soldier and perhaps he’d appreciate my attempts to come to terms with this part of my family history.

Some of you have, no doubt, already read sections of this essay. Some of you, who are new to Day By Day, will be seeing this for the first time. Everyone will be unfamiliar with the updates and new section. Here’s Part One in case you missed it yesterday: The Heroics of Being Alive, P1

I realized only today that Part Two is longer than Part One so I hope you’ll indulge me. I’ll say only this about this ongoing project - I have no intention of cheer-leading. My hope only is to maybe just get us talking about what being a hero actually means. I know how my father felt, and that’s really all I know. I leave any judgement to you all and post without further comment.

---

My dad, the reluctant soldier

Part 3: The Heroics

A couple years ago, I happened to find myself at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, giving a presentation on Mount Washington. Facing a solid wall of about 100 vets, men and women of various ages, most wearing patches or hats signifying their station, many in wheelchairs, I talked about that mountain and I included its role in World War II. For the most part, everyone honored me by staying awake.

But after, a few members of the audience stayed behind to chat, and we gathered around at table – about a half dozen of us - and I asked each of them this: “Tell me about the thing that happened to you during your service that you best remember.”

Here’s some of the stories they told me;

-A story about being in Korea, being cold and gray, and coming upon the dead bodies of three Korean men, each wrapped in filthy clothes and blankets. The American soldiers tried to take the blankets off the men for their own warmth, but the smell was too awful. “I told the men, just take these guys and toss them in the fire. We couldn’t just leave them here.”

-A woman told me the story about how when she signed up, the Marines didn’t allow women to be combat soldiers so she was stuck doing office work. One of the women in the office got pregnant, which was not allowed, and when it was found out they put the baby in an orphanage and gave her a dishonorable discharge. “They came in, cleaned out her desk and walked her to the gate. They shut it behind her, turned around and walked away.”

-A younger vet told me about the time he was stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, and he never saw combat. What he did do though was drive supply trucks from base to base throughout New England and he recalled the first time he saw Mount Washington. “I just kept staring at it out my window and going slower and slower, until I realized I was barely moving. I looked out my rear view and there’s 50 cars lined up behind me! Me and the guys had a good laugh over that.”

Another man told me about his time in Rome, petting the stray cats. One said he had an easier time in the service then being a taxi driver in Boston. And one older woman, with a dreadful cough and teary eyes, wouldn’t talk at all about her service, just saying over and over again how she wished she could hike a mountain.

No tales of glory.

Give vets some space and an honest ear, and the stories you will hear are deeply personal and human; tiny core moments that they have carried in their hearts for decades. Many will bring up comrades in arms. Some will talk about the places they were stationed. A few will mention food. Almost none, like my uncle, will talk about the hurt.

And heroics? Not so much. Still, I think to myself, maybe THAT is heroic, maybe doing the best you can for an imperfect country that often asks too much from you and just coming home with your dignity and sanity intact… Maybe that’s heroic.

Part 4: The Pride

Flashback to my eighteenth birthday. My father drove me out to the downtown post office where I was to register for the selective service. For the life of me, I can’t recall if this is still a thing or not. But at the time, he wanted to do this personally. He wanted to talk to me about what it meant to him and what was in his, and my, heart.

If you knew my father, you knew he was a man of few words, but when he had something to say, he didn’t hold back. It was a long afternoon, but the thing I remember the most was his ultimatum, something I never remember my father ever giving me.

“The draft is one thing because if you ever get drafted like I did, I want to you to do your best and make us proud,” he said. “By if you sign up on your own, if you volunteer, I’ll disown you.”

That was my true father.

So, where are we? What is the lesson for us on this day set aside to honor the men and women in uniform, gone but not forgotten? Would I disown my daughter were she to sign up for a military career? Of course not.

Maybe it’s just that I’m far less interested in the waving flags and speeches then I am in the stories. Maybe I’d rather put a microphone on the lapel of some of these folks while they are still alive than to salute their gravestone after they have passed. Maybe we should ask “How do you feel?” instead of “How did you fight?”

My father grew more cynical and distant about his time in the service as he got older. I remember a Memorial Day a few years before he passed, when I was trying to practice what I preached about remembering vets while they were still alive, so I called and thanked him for his service.

“I ain’t dead yet,” he said.

“Obviously, dad! I just wanted you to know I appreciate your service.”

“Daniel,” he said, using my full name which meant business, “the only way to honor them is to not make any more dead ones.”

That’s good advice, of course, but we’re very, very bad at taking that advice, aren’t we? We somehow, always, relentlessly, do just the opposite.

The image of my dad and the man he was that I want my daughter to know

Part 5: The Path

I don’t actually know where to go from here when it comes to Memorial Day. I may never.

Last year, at her ceremony, out there in the parking lot of her school, as my daughter finished her song, she glanced over at me and I waved like a madman. I waved and smiled like a lunatic because I was there for her and she worked hard at learning that song, so I didn’t care in that moment about America. She grinned and looked away, giggling with her friends about her old man’s antics.

As I always do around this time of year, we talk a little bit about Memorial Day. I show her a picture of her grandfather, whom she does not remember. I tell her that he was a good man and a good daddy, because he was. A good soldier, though? He was not.

I want to find a pathway to celebrating life and I worry that, maybe, this isn’t it. I want there to be no veterans. And yet, I feel engaged enough with the light to understand that it only burns brighter because of the darkness. But I wish that darkness didn’t hurt so very much all the time.

Ultimately, I suppose, if you’re hurting, your heart’s beating. And if your heart’s beating, there’s still time. I want that to be enough. I wish it was all bigger. I wish I was bigger.

So, as I’ve decided to do a couple Memorial Days ago, I’ll show my daughter pictures of her grandfather not in uniform, but rather, holding me, there on a sunny spot of lawn in the back yard of our nondescript, suburban home. Or the picture of me pushing both of them down a corridor, my father in a wheelchair, my baby in a stroller.

As is the case every single Memorial Day, I don’t have a plan. My uncertainty always remains. And when confronted with uncertainty, I just turn to her because I know I love her, and that gives me focus.

The parades will come and go, there will always be wreathes to lay on tombstones, and she’ll always have another patriotic song to learn.

I wish none of that were true, but it is. I can’t just wish that away.

So, as always, we’ll push on and remember what’s worth remembering, and hope for the best. That’s heroic, maybe? That’s worth celebrating while we wait and work for better. We’re alive and that’s what I have for now. Maybe that’s enough.

Thanks for reading this series everyone. I hope you enjoyed this, though perhaps enjoyed isn’t the right word. I hope that you took a few moments to just reflect on what all this means, has meant, and can mean. We appreciate you all!

---

Back to our regularly scheduled programming! Tomorrow, Chapter Four of “Where There’s Smoke” will drop. We hope you’ve been enjoying this hiking memoir so far, with a new chapter coming out each Wednesday. Can you guess what Fire Tower we’re hiking to tomorrow based on this picture? (Not a lot to go on!)