Red White and Blue

She awoke this morning with tears in her eyes. Some things just never get easier she thought in fact some things get harder. She knew it was time to get the children and grandchildren up and fed. They had come home for this day as they did every year. She could deal with birthdays and anniversaries alone, but even after all this time, she couldn’t deal with this day. They would have come this year anyway as she was to make a speech today and there was no way they would have missed that.

As she lay back with her eyes closed she could still here the shots. Bang! 7 shots rang out. Bang! Again 7 shots went out. And finally, Bang! the last 7 shots rang out. The bugler started to play Taps and she could see back in time when her beloved father was killed in the war to end all wars, World War I. He had left his wife to raise 4 children on her own and went off to serve his country. She still remembers her mama patting her back and saying “Now, now child. You should be proud of your Papa. He died for our Country.” She thought then she would have been prouder if he had stayed home with his family.

Her thoughts shifted to a new time and a new era. She was a young woman who was happily married with three children and one on the way. She thought nothing could take her happiness away. She was wrong. When her husband told her had enlisted to fight in the war, she remembers clearly screaming at him “Why, why would you be so stupid.” She remembers him talking about them bombing Pearl Harbor and she didn’t care. She only wanted him at home, let someone else fight. But he left anyway. Months later she again was hearing the guns go off. The bugler played as they folded up the flag and handed it to her. She remembers the Officer who gave her the flag thanking her for her husband’s service in keeping our country free. She held her head in tears and felt her husband’s life had been wasted.

She lays there today thinking how wrong she was then, but how was she to know what was to come in the future? She thinks about the sound of those rifles going off.; 7 soldiers holding those rifles, the rifles going off 3 times and Taps being played. She knew that she had heard that more times than anyone person should have to. She lost her son in the Korean War and one of her grandsons in the Vietnam War. She lost her great grandson in Desert storm. How much did one woman have to face.

Her whole life could still be in anger towards her Country for taking so many loved ones away. What was wrong with this Country that they had to send innocent men and now women into battles to fight for stuff that isn’t even important to us? How can they just take our loved ones away? How different things can be when you look at them from someone else’s perspective instead of by how you feel.

She remembers her son coming to her one warm summer day. She could tell that he wanted to talk to her so she did what she always had done when her children had needed to talk seriously with her. She put on a pot of tea and sat down at the table and raised one eyebrow as if to say “Alright. What’s going on?” Her son sat there and stared at her for a few moments and tears ran down his face. “Mama, I am so sorry. I love you so much and I know how you feel about wars….” She didn’t give him a chance to finish.”No,” she said, “NO! NO! NO!!” as she pounded her fist on the table. “ Oh God, Not you too, Son.” “Mama, please let me explain, please Mama.” He knew she was ready to listen when she clasped her hands together and she nodded towards him to continue.

“I know Mama that you lost your daddy and my dad and uncle to wars. I know that you don’t think that you should have to lose anyone else to a war. Mama just think for a minute, don’t you think other families have felt the same? This isn’t about what you might lose if I go to war; this is about what our Country could lose if we didn’t have soldiers to fight wars. We have so many freedoms, Mama, ones we take for granted everyday. We are free to marry who we want, live where we want. We are free to elect anyone we want to run our country and we are even free to publicly say anything we want about those that we have elected. We have freedom and choices that most people only ever dream about. We do this Mama because we have men and women willing to give up their lives if needed for us. We have those freedoms because of men like Grandpa, Dad, and Uncle John. Please don’t ask me not to be that kind of man. The blood that runs through my veins is not red Mama, its red, white and blue. I love my Country that much. “

She remembers that to this day. It is what kept her from falling apart when they came to her home to tell her that her son had died. A heroes’ death, they called it. She told them that everybody that serves our Country was hero no matter what. She remembers the day they buried him and for the first time she in her life she felt sadness for her loss, but the anger was gone and she feels a new emotion, she feels Proud. She wants to jump up and say “Look, Look at what my son did for you, but as she glances around at the people who have come, she realizes that many of their sons have given as much. She realizes that an army is not one soldier and she needed to be proud of everyone that has or was serving their Country. Our Country, she thought.

Vietnam War brought a different kind of lost to her and this time the anger came back. Not for losing her son but for the way that some of the American people were treating the soldiers when they returned home. She wanted to scream at them and tell them “leave them alone. It’s because of us they are willing to fight, willing to die. These soldiers make it possible for you to have the freedom to treat them this way.” How could they not be proud of the soldiers and love them as much as she did, and then she remembered, it was not so long ago that she only felt anger and hatred for a Country that would send their men to war.

The Gulf War took her grandson and at the funeral she felt proud to be in our Country such as ours. She had lost part of her family over the years to war but she lost them because they loved their country so much. She knew that no matter what, each and every one of them was her own private hero.

Two months ago, she buried another grandson; killed in Iraq, serving his Country. She can remember his young wife screaming “Why did he have to go? It’s not fair?’ She remembers hugging the young woman and told her He had to go because he loved his Country so much.”

She wipes her tears and checks the time. She needs to get moving and get ready. She is speaking at the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery today . When everyone was ready they helped her with her walker to the car. They drove in silence to the park, her one son holding her hand as if to say, “ it’s alright Mama, its alright.”

When they got to the Cemetery, she smiled when she saw all of the people who had come out to celebrate Memorial Day together. She recognized some of the faces but in her heart she knew that it didn’t matter whether she knew them or not, they were family. A family who was only joined together because of a soldier somewhere. When it was her time to speak, some of herfamily helped her to the microphone.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Thank you for coming out here today, to not only pay tribute to the ones we have lost but to show our love and patriotism to all of our soldiers; past, present and future. I have lost someone I love to every war since the War to end all Wars. I know I am not alone in that. I know many of you have also lost loved ones to the wars. We can scream and holler about their shouldn’t be any wars, we can say that we are only going to war for this reason or that reason, we can cuss our president out for sending our soldiers to war, but we can do all that because of those soldiers. We have the freedoms we have today because of those unselfish people that love us and our Country enough to go to war to ensure we keep those freedoms. I know that sometimes I get angry too that we are once again in a war. Maybe we shouldn’t be there and maybe we should. But I do know one thing, whether at war or during peace time, we need to thank our Soldiers for their love of us and our Country. We need to thank them for all of their sacrifices so that we can live in this great Country. And we need to remember something else, for our soldiers, whether man or woman, they are willing to give up their lives for us. We mourn our losses, we grieve forever when they are gone, but we are proud that they died for what they believed in. Their blood is shed, but it runs not just red, but red, white and blue.

She steps away from the microphone exhausted. Her granddaughter takes her hand to help her find a seat and says , “Grandma you did too much. You shouldn’t wear yourself out.” She touches her granddaughters face and says “We can never do too much. We can never pay back to them for the sacrifices they made for us.”

Today is Memorial Day. Today is my time to once again take some time to grieve for Gary, my late husband, Sergeant during the Vietnam War, Today is my day to call My son to tell him how much I love him and am proud of him, US ARMY Sergeant, and today is the day I want to tell each and everyone of you who has served our country, is serving our country, or has family serving our Country. Thank You. Your sacrifices have not gone unnoticed. I love you and may God keep you all safe.

Jimmy

She sat in the rocking chair on the porch. Today was the day that the grand babies would be here. She smiled to herself as she thought the grand babies were no longer babies, and even their babies were starting to have babies of their own.

It was a sunshiny autumn morning with just a little nip in the air but she found that she was pulling the quilted lap robe tighter around her. Her mind drifted back to a time it was her own children she was sitting there waiting for. As her mind drifted back, she thought of the children's father and smiled slightly thinking of how fond she had been of him. He was a good man, and yet no matter how much she tried he wasn't the one she had loved.

She met Jimmy when she was sixteen. He was tall with black hair and big brown eyes and eye lashes that women would have killed for. He caught her eye at the county fair and she remembers him smiling shyly at her. It seemed that wherever she was at the fair, she would look up and catch his eye. She isn't sure what moment it was that she fell in love with him, but she knew it was that night.

She was standing at the booth that had the Ladies Circle's quilts on display when she suddenly felt someone was standing next to her. She looked up and there he was so close she could touch him and she smiled a flirty smile and motioned to the quilts. "They're pretty aren't they." she asked. He smiled, never taking his eyes off her, and said "Beautiful, simply beautiful." She remembers blushing, because she knew he wasn't talking about the quilts.

She turned and started to walk off and he followed her. "My name is Jimmy," He said. "What's your name, Sunshine" She grinned and said "Now how did you know my name?" and they both laughed. Even after she finally told him her name, he always called her Sunshine. She remembers one time asking him why he called Sunshine, and he put his arms around her and said, "Just like Sunshine, You warm my soul." She understood exactly what he meant.

She thought of the rest of that summer and how she spent every moment she could with him. In the fall when it was time to return to school, Jimmy being older started college, she knew that their love could hold them together no matter how many miles apart they were. He would come home on weekends to spend them with her, and although her parents cautioned her about spending so much time with him, he was like a drug that she was addicted to. Every day
her love for him grew and she knew in her heart that he loved her too.

Some weekends when he came home, he would bring his best friend John with him. She liked John, he was funny and made her laugh. He also gave them time to spend together without him, never trying to butt in and as that school year flew by, she realized that John was just as much her best friend as he was Jimmy's. He use to tease her about stealing her away from Jimmy, but they both knew her heart belonged to him.

As springtime came, Jimmy asked her to be his wife and she knew that she would never love anyone as much as she loved him. Her parents would never have allowed her to marry before graduating high school so instead of an engagement ring her gave her a cameo locket and inside was a picture of him. She wore that necklace everyday and almost wore the picture out by opening it up and rubbing it. She felt so close to him when he wasn't there.
She thinks back to that Friday night that changed her life. She had sat on her parents porch waiting for him as the rain poured down. During the evening, her mama had brought her a blanket and a cup tea. She had tried to get her to come indoors but she just knew Jimmy would be there soon. As the storm raged, her thoughts were of Jimmy and how he must have been slowed down by the weather. At some point in time, she fell asleep. She remembers being
woke up by something, and to this day she believes it was Jimmy calling her, but when she sat up and looked around it was early daylight and Jimmy hadn't come.

When she walked into the house, daddy was already up and coffee was made. He took one look at her face and said "Sit down and I'll get you some coffee. When it gets a little later we will call Jimmy's parents and find out what is going on." He placed his hand on her shoulder and said "Don't worry darling, the weather probably just slowed him down and by the time he got to his parents he probably thought it was to late to call."

She was sitting there drinking coffee when she heard a car pull in the yard. She ran to the door, relieved Jimmy had finally come. But when she got to the door, it wasn't Jimmy, it was John. She started to run too him, and as he stood at the side of the car with tears running down his face, she just knew that Jimmy was never going to come. She collapsed on the ground, crying when John picked her up into his arms, he told her how Jimmy was determined to get to her and the roads were flooding, and he must not have seen the bridge had been taken out. John just stood there and held her close and cried with her.

She doesn't remember much of the next few months. There is a slight memory of Jimmy's funeral but otherwise everything else seemed in a fog. She does remember that John was always around. He would try to make her smile and as days went by, she started to get back
into the routine of life. John had now become a big part of her life and was always there to lift her up when she was down. One day he asked her to marry him. He told her that he had always been in love with her, and that although Jimmy had been his best friend, he knew that Jimmy wouldn't want her to be alone. She told him no, and many times after that told him no, he pursued her for the next few months as he kept proclaiming his love for her. One day, finally at wit's end, she cried "How can I marry you? I will always love Jimmy." John's eyes filled with tears as he looked at her, "You will never know if you will ever love anyone else, if you hold onto the past. I love you enough for both of us and I am willing to marry you just with the hope that someday you will love me."

She remembers the day that she finally told him she would marry him. She doubted that she would ever love anyone like Jimmy but she needed to move on with her life, and what better way to do it than marry her best friend. She knows that John did everything in his power to make her love him, and although she was very fond of him, she never could get that feeling she had had with Jimmy. She knew he was aware of the nights that she would get up and set on the porch crying. He never mentioned it in the morning.

Years went by, and babies were born, and she smiles now when she thinks back to all those years. Dear John, was a good man and a good father. Yet when on his deathbed fifty years after they got married, he held her hand and said I will save a place for you in Heaven. She remembers that she smiled and leaned over and kissed his forehead, and prayed that she would be forgiven as it was Jimmy's side that she wanted to walk next to in Heaven.

She wonders now how she could have been so unfair John. He had given her so much and yet she held back the one thing that he wanted most, her love. She realizes that its to late to make up to him for not loving him and yet even then she wonders how she could have done things differently. She probably shouldn't have married him and allowed him to find someone that would love him as much as he deserved to be love. As she sat there rubbing her chest, she thought of how much she had cheated John and herself out of.

When the grandchildren arrived a couple hours later, there she was in her rocker. Her eyes closed and she had passed from this world holding a cameo locket with a faded picture in it. Her granddaughter turned to her brother tears overflowing down her face as she said, "I wonder if she found Jimmy."

The Glimpse

She knew the minute she stepped off the elevator there was something different today. The quietness of the nursing home was unusual and she felt sadness in the air. She went straight to his room as she usually did but he wasn't there. She sat the things down she had brought for him and went to the nurse's desk to find out if they had seen him. Angie, the nurse that she had become friends with over the last several years was standing there with tears in her eyes and just pointed to another room. Kev's room.

Kev was a man she had met only a few months before. He had returned home from Desert Storm with no problems until he got home. He started to get sick and come down with ailments. Some had still never diagnosed. They had no idea what he had that was making him sick. Each time she went to visit, she always stopped in to see him. He called her Ready. This started as a joke, she remembers. He said to her one day, "Hey beautiful, you want to run away with me?" and she said "Sure, I'm Ready." As time went on and they got to know each other, she would call him a couple times during the week just to check up on him and their friendship grew. She never missed a chance to visit with him when she went to the nursing home, and even introduced him to the man she was there to see originally. The two of them became good friends. A bonding between a Vietnam Vet and a Desert Storm Vet. A bonding between two men who both knew their time on earth wasn't going to be much longer.

She walked into the room and the man she had come to see was sitting by the bed holding Kev's hand. There were tears in his eyes as she leaned down to give him a kiss on the cheek. He whispered "Kev's parents have been called." She walked around the other side of the bed looking down at the young man who no longer resembled the picture of himself in uniform, that sat on his nightstand. She picked up his hand and smoothed back the hair with her other hand. His eyes opened and through cracked and dried lips he whispered, "I'm Ready". She laughed softly and said, "I think you are confused, Kev, I'm Ready. " He shook his head and said "No, this time I am ready. I have had enough of the pain. Enough of being trapped in a bed. I am just ready to go. Would you say a prayer for me?" She stood there, her eyes filled with tears, she was not ready to let her friend go. She wasn't ready to say good-bye, and yet she knew in her heart that she couldn't want him here either, not in the shape he was in. She reached down and kissed his forehead and looked deep into his eyes and said "Are you sure Kev?" He nodded his head. She closed her eyes and said, "Please, God, be merciful. Please give Kev what he needs. Amen" She couldn't pray to let him live, she couldn't pray for him to die. She knew she had to turn it over to God and accept what happened.

Minutes later, Kev's parents showed up, so she took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him back to his room. There they talked of Kev and of his dying. He told her he wasn't ready to die. She just nodded and said "Apparently God isn't ready for you to die yet either." About a half an hour later, Angie came in the room to tell them Kev had passed away. She got him settled in bed and they brought him in a sedative. When he was asleep, she stood there and looked down at him with tears in her eyes. Someday, they would be telling her the same thing about him.

On her drive back home, she thought about the friendship that she had built with Kev. She didn't question why God had brought him into her life, just grateful for the short time they had together. She thought about the year they sent her son to Iraq, barely 19 yrs old. She remembers how she shut herself off from the world then. She went to school, she went to work, and she watched the news of the war and cried. In that year, her marriage went down the drain, and she didn't even notice. She was so focused on her son and her feeling that she just knew he was never coming home. She remembers Thanksgiving weekend when they announced a boy from Minnesota had been killed and they were not going to release his name until family was notified. The horror of that weekend waiting for the phone call or the knock on the door, just knowing it was about her son. The relief she felt when he called her that Sunday night to tell her he was okay and that it was his best friend who died. Through all that she remembers that never once had she ever thought how she would feel if something happened to him. Today she got a glimpse.........

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.