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We were sitting in the cafeteria of a VA hospital. My dad needed psychiatric care. He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress—his year in Vietnam. I hated being there.
I was twenty. I was trying to be his son. I desperately wanted a father. He heard helicopters on the horizon, always. He told me so. He wept when we were there.
I went with him every week. We ate lunch between his sessions — group therapy, one-on-one counseling, and a medication adjustment. He was always frazzled. He sat and silently stared.
Disabled veterans swarmed all around us: missing hands, phantom legs, a single face that was bleached pure white—horrible: chemical warfare. My father answered when I saw him.
This is how it happened:
My father was saying I should never support war. His eyes were so absent. Of course not, daddy. I could never support a war. I spouted this proudly. Then the bleach-faced man walked in.
He looked like a vampire: perfect white skin and clumpy bleached white hair. He had no lips, they were burned away. His eyelids were gone. He glanced at me with a wide whole eyeball stare. I was frozen. I stared. I couldn’t help it. He saw the shock on my face. I don’t know how to write this. His face seemed to cringe and start screaming:
Oh God! I’m so sorry. I know I’m a freak. I didn’t mean to scare you.
I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just… Oh please, please forgive me. I’m so fucking sorry. The man ran out. I starting sobbing. I sobbed pure guilt in my hands. I felt such bottomless despair.
My father rubbed the back of my head to console me. He said I should never support war. I believed him.
I will never. I promise. I swear, daddy. I swear.
I haven’t.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by TomHardiee: Passing the Blunt, War, Trauma, Guilt, and Staring – http://tinyurl.com/yjosqj3...
PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
[Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace's Odes . The line can be roughly translated into English as: "It is sweet and right to die for one's country.", "It is noble and glorious to die for your fatherland." or "It is beautiful and honorable to die for your fatherland."]