Thoughts on Memorial Day...

I'm not sure how many people know that my dad is a Vietnam veteran. It's not a secret or anything; it's just not something he talks about. At least not with us. I'm sure his co-workers must know but, again, I doubt he talks about it much. Both he and his brother served in the war although my uncle enlisted in the Navy before he could be drafted and my dad was eventually drafted into the Army. I do know he was shot and he has a small scar on the back of his leg as a physical reminder. He almost never wears shorts, tho, so you'd never have the opportunity to see it.

There are some vets who like to talk about their time in the service and those who don't. My dad is in the latter camp. But then, he's what you'd call a "still water that runs deep." A few years ago my mom was going through some boxes and came across some stuff that belonged to my dad. There were some photos of him as an adolescent and certificates from bowling tournaments and old report cards. There were also some letters he had written to his family while he was in Vietnam. And while I won't get into the specifics of what he wrote, it made me unbearably sad to read these letters. He was always really upbeat in what he wrote but to this day I still grieve for the young man he was when he went off to war. The son who asked his mom to please send him a package with brownies because the MREs were so nasty. This person whose life was forever changed by that tour of duty...fighting a war that was needless and stupid.

Looking through the contents of the box my mom gave me I wasn't sure if I should or would read the letters. After all, he wouldn't know if I did or not. I can only presume that he came into possession of them at some point when my grandmother was moved into a nursing home due to advancing dementia from Alzheimer's back in the early 90s. Or maybe one of his sisters found them and gave them to him. Either way, they found their way into a box that got carried on and off of many a moving truck over the years before finding themselves in my temporary possession.

Ultimately I decided to read them before passing along the folder of his belongings. I didn't let Michael read them nor did I tell my brother about them. And I didn't tell my dad that I read them. But I think about them and the person he was back then and the person he might have become had he not gotten drafted and sent off to war. And then I think about the other vets and those who never made it back. What might their lives had been like if they'd never gone off to war? That is what I think about on Memorial Day. Not sales at Macy's or trips to the beach. I think about people like my dad and wonder what might have been.