His Thoughts

The sun broke over the mountain as he waited there in the brisk morning, so cold his breath showed on each exhale. He looked at the wonder around him as a deer walked out into the meadow. The steam rolling off the back of the large buck as he grazed on the dew topped grass. He watched as the deer gracefully picked his way to eat the ice frosted clover. He remembered as a boy how his father had taught him to hunt. He remembered back upon each season's kill and wondered now why he took such glory in it, when the glory, for him now, was to watch how graceful and beautiful these animals could be.

As his mind went back in time he thought about growing up poor with parents who worked so hard each day to put food on the table for him and the rest of the family. He is not sure that he ever thanked them for that but he knows that how he lived his life was in direct lines of how he was raised. Perhaps that was the way to show appreciation. He remembers the woodshed that father would take him and his brothers when they were bad. He smiled now thinking of his gentle father with tears running down his face as he spanked his boys for being bad. His mother was the true disciplinarian and her word was law and yet she had a gentleness about her that made people seek her out for advice and help. He remembers when his younger brother was killed and how mama and daddy cried, he was too young to understand death but he cried to as his parent's pain was so apparent.

He sat there and remembered the first time he saw her. It was the fifth grade and she was a new student. She had golden blond ringlets and a daisy dress and he fell in love. Everyone wanted to be her friend and due to his shyness he backed away from her, afraid she would reject his friendship. He remembers the day at recess as he sat on the stone wall by the school, just looking out at the field covered with wild flowers and dreaming of being anywhere but school, when she joined him and asked him if she could sit with him. From that day forward they were inseparable. He remembered after graduation, going to her house in his best set of clothes, ring in his pocket and scared out of his mind. He remembers getting down on his knee and before he could even ask her, she was jumping up and down screaming, "Yes, yes!" Her parents came out to see what was going on and suddenly everybody was hugging. To this day, he never did get a chance to ask her to be his wife, yet they did get married. He smiles when he remembers their wedding day and smiles even more when he thinks about their wedding night. They moved into a house that her dad owned and he got a job in the mines. He remembers how much he hated that job but it paid well. Soon he knew that he was going to be there for a long time when he found out that he was going to be a father. He had such dreams of going to college but his love for her was so much more important to him.

He remembers the day his son was born. It had been a tough delivery but there he sat with his son in his arms holding onto his wife's hand. He felt that nothing bad could ever come to them; how little he knew, when he thinks back on it now. The Vietnam War was raging on in the outside world and he remembers his innocence about thinking it would never reach him, it was so far away. He remembers coming home from work one night and finding her sitting at the table in tears. She was holding a piece of paper and when he walked through the door she flung her arms around him and cried her heart out. He gently pushed her out of his arms and walked over to the table and sat her down. He sat down and with shaking fingers picked up the letter she had been holding. He knew before he even picked it up what it was and as he read the tears fell down his face, he was being sent to that war that he always thought was to far off to touch him.

He thinks back to the day he kissed his wife and got on the bus. He thinks about how scared he was knowing that he may never see her again. He thinks back to the time he is in the jungle fighting and praying that he stays alive to return home to his wife and son. He prays that he will live to be home to hold the second child that he got notified was coming. He didn't want to leave them but he knew that he had a duty to his Country and at that moment it was a larger duty than to his family. He doesn't want to think about that horrible time there, the friends he had lost, the injuries he incurred. His mind goes back to the day he felt the pain before he heard the noise, he remembers laying there on that damp jungle forest floor and praying that God would protect his family. He remembers waking up in a helicopter with a medic hovering over him and telling him to hang on. The last thought he had before waking up in an Army Hospital was the sting of the morphine needle.

He thinks back to the day lying in that hospital when he was told he was headed home.

He had just received his third purple heart and he had done his duty. He remembers coming off that airplane on crutches and looking out at the people that were there. There had been horror stories coming across the ocean about how the returning soldiers were being called names and had stuff thrown at them. He remembers the anger when he had wondered how could the American people treat them like that, they were where they were sent to war by the government, it wasn't their choice and yet they were the ones that were treated so badly. Yet when he stepped down off the plane, there were only a few people standing there, one of which was his wife, and the rest was his family.

He remembers holding his daughter for the first time, she is already walking and he has missed some important events in her and his young son's life. He vowed then to try and make up for that but he didn't realize until today that some things just can't be made up. He remembers the first night home and holding his wife close to him as they cuddle in bed, and later when she wakes him up from a nightmare that will return nightly for years to come. He is welcomed back to the mines and for everyone around him life continues, but for him he is still stuck in that world of fear.

Years go by and his children grow up. His drinking to bury the demons he carries has accelerated and it's his shame to remember showing up at his son's graduation drunk. He never does seem to capture that bond he had with his son prior to leaving for Vietnam and never really does gain closeness with his daughter although in his own defense he wanted to. Years continue traveling through his mind and he stops when he remembers his lovely wife telling him that now that the children are grown and in college she is leaving him. He is once again thrown into that world of fear as he realizes that she has just gotten to the point she won't tolerate his drinking and verbal abuse when he drinks anymore. He remembers begging her to stay, he will stop drinking, he will do whatever he needs to do to keep her but she has had her fill and she gets into her car and drives away with her suitcases in the trunk. He remembers wandering around the house wondering what he had done wrong that he was being punished for, he cursed the God that he use to pray to and he drank. Days later he finally woke up, hung over and decided that the only way he was going to get her back was to sober up. He threw out all the booze in the house and from that day forward he didn't touch a drop, even when the nightmares came he rode them out, he knew in his heart she would be back. He never realized until this moment how wrong his heart was.

He thinks back to a few months ago, when he hadn't been feeling well. He finally decided that he needed to go to the doctor and made an appointment with the VA clinic in his area. He starts thinking about the past week and walking his granddaughter down the aisle as she got married. He is grateful that even though his daughter and he never really got along, she never once stopped him from having a relationship with his granddaughter. It was his pride and privilege to escort her down the aisle to exchange vows with the young man she chose to spend her life with. His happiness that day was more than all the days added up since returning home from the war. Yesterday he recalls he sat in that VA clinic getting the results back from the tests they had done the week before and hearing the doctor tell him that he has cancer. An unforeseen side effect of Agent Orange. He can still hear the doctor's words as he told him "I am sorry sir, it is too far advanced to stop it. We have different things we could try to postpone it and give you time, but in the end I am afraid there isn't a cure"

He remembers walking away from the clinic, numb feeling. Decisions had to be made. He had written his will years previously prior to going to war and he saw no reason to change it now. He had never given her the life of happiness he had promised so he would leave her all his possessions. It would never be enough to make up for the years of hell he had put her through but maybe in time she could forgive him.

He sat there watching the sun that has finally topped over the mountain and thinks to himself, "I was killed in Vietnam, but my body never knew it." He leans back against the cold rock and closes his eyes. He was never to awake again.