I'm not back officially (this wrist thing was a whole arm-neck-and-shoulder thing, which was particularly bad this time around: I'll be back in a week or so). But I wrote this memory a year ago, and wanted to share it for Memorial Day. It's a small memory, recreated as best as I can from some 20-30 years remove... I wish you all a wonderful late spring (or fall, for those on the other side of the globe), and I'll be back soon. A good, sweet, and memory-full Memorial Day to all. With peace and great gratitude to all who served, Mark ------------------ 1990's. April. Cold and windy. Walking through a cemetery. In huge cities, cemeteries are sudden oases---once inside, the rest of the world ceases to exist. It's silent inside, and beautiful. A private little forest in the middle of a vast city... In the distance, a siren: an ambulance on Lake Shore Drive---a huge multi-laned highway that leads to downtown Chicago. I glanced at downtown: It stuck up from under the trees like a bunch of tall gods. But here, in this mini Shangri-la, I might as well have been in another country. The breeze rustled in the trees, a dog barked in the distance---cradled in deep, lush echoes---and I lay back on a tree, and rested. It was bliss. Suddenly, a woman was crying. I turned around. It was a woman in her 20s, kneeling at a grave. She fell silent. Then she whispered to the grave for some time, bobbing back and forth, occasionally kissing the stone. I watched quietly. I supremely private moment. Sacred. I didn't move. After some time, she got up, eyed me, wiped her eyes, and walked over to me. "I'm sorry to disturb you," she said. "Oh you didn't," I said: "I'm just sorry you've had a loss." "Oh, that was years ago," she said. "My father. He was killed in Vietnam. He was buried in a military cemetery, but we moved him here. We're gonna move him one more time---to where he was born. Seems cruel to move him around like this: I want to say, 'just one more move, Dad, then you can rest, we promise...'" She dropped her bag: "I was a child when he was killed," she said, sitting on the ground: "I never knew him. It's hard. And now---as I reach the age that he was at, when he was killed---I come here hoping to understand him better. I try...I try..." She eyed me, embarrassed. "I know: How do you get close to someone who's buried in the ground?" She looked down: "I guess I believe I'll learn something from his grave. It's silly. I'm sorry, I should go." "Wait," I said, feeling presumptuous holding her back, but not wanting her to leave so suddenly: "It's not silly: You looked very connected over there. Very devoted; loving; dear. It was very moving." I realized I just sounded like I'd been eavesdropping. I started to explain, when she said: "No, it's ok." Then she smiled: "You look like you were my dad's age, back then. Did you go?" "To Vietnam?" I said. "Yes." I gulped a little. "They had a lottery back then; I got a very high number: I was never drafted." "I'm not upset with you," she said, "I'm glad you didn't have to go. I have mixed feelings about that war. My grandfather fought in WWII, and that war I have no questions about. But Vietnam: I don't know. I don't know if it was ever winnable. All I know is, my dad was there, and from what I saw of his diaries---and heard from his buddies after the war---it was terrible, and they had all this doubt about what they accomplished, whether they could ever liberate the people they were fighting for---many of whom didn't seem to want them there---and whether those goals were for the power brokers or the people they were fighting for. They felt trapped in a place they weren't wanted, by the very people they were fighting for, and by a lot of people back home who didn't want them there either. It must've been terrible, very alone. Did you protest back then?" I felt painfully inadequate to answer. But I told her the truth---that I had friends in Vietnam, and I never spoke anything but the greatest respect for them. I wrote letters to congress to bring them home, yes, I helped raise money, took part in local forums with veterans, all to end the war; but I always supported the soldiers. And nearly every soldier I met urged me to bring the war to an end. One said: "You have the freedom to stop this: Stop it. It's not WWII: We can't win this one. Let us use our powers for wars that must be fought: This isn't one of them.' I never said anything against the soldiers, never. Did my efforts make it harder for the soldiers? I fear they did. As the years went on, I feared they did. I said something like, "if I made it harder for your father, I'm deeply sorry. We thought we were helping them. But maybe we weren't..." She sighed. "You weren't belligerent to them. You at least tried to listen. But you know: When a few of my dad's buddies talk about Dad, to this day, they break down. It makes me feel so uplifted to know that some men I've never met can't finish their sentences when they talk about Dad: He touched them that much. That's where the truth lies. They died for each other. I try to imagine the bond. I just wish I could've talked to him once back then, just to get an idea...I wish he could've spoken to me just once. Once before he died..." She took something out of her bag: a small buddha. "This was from a woman in the South. He never said where: A lot of soldiers didn't say 'where' while they were fighting. But the military sent this back with his belongings. He wrote, I got this from a woman in a village. That's all. That's all I know about it. She lunged forward: "He didn't go along with burning villages: All his buddies said that. But Mom said that he wrote to her: 'Whatever you hear, don't judge any of us who've been here: Some are bad people, but many aren't: You can't imagine until you're here. Just don't judge until you know: Most of us try to do the very best we can, and it's very hard. I hope you believe that...' God," the young woman said to me: "Can you imagine having to write that, when you're in war??? Can you imagine???" (No. I couldn't.) "So, he befriended the South Vietnamese," she continued. "And this woman gave him this little buddha, to thank him, and to give him strength. And he said it worked: It made him braver!" She laughed: "He was an atheist---can you believe it---and a buddha gave him strength! They say that there are 'no atheists in foxholes', but he was an atheist. And this little buddha gave him solace. Keeping peace inside when there's nothing but war outside is what he wrote. So I carry this buddha around with me always. Especially when I come here. I wanna say: 'See Dad? I kept this. And I'll never give it up....ever...'" "Does it give you peace?" I said. She stared at it: "Naaaaaaah. I mean, it's beautiful," she said. She showed it to me: It was indeed beautifully carved, in wood, with exquisite detail; and it still had a beautiful veneer. "But peace?" she said: "I don't feel it. It's more like---and try to understand this: This belonged to a woman---perhaps the same age as me, now, like we could've been friends had she lived here back then---who lived on the other side of the world where it was like an oven every day---Dad always wrote that stepping into Vietnam was like stepping into an oven: It was soooooo hot, and sooooooo humid, and it hit you like a tidal wave and you never got over it---and this woman lived in that oven, probably grew up in that oven, and maybe she was killed or taken to those camps they put dissidents in, and maybe she died there...I don't know and I'll never know. I don't know this woman, sir," she said, almost pleadingly now: "But I have her buddha, and it's sacred to me, and it's a personal connection to her, a strange woman on the other side of the world who helped my father at the hardest time of his life. And I want to thank her. I want to thank her." She began to cry. "And carrying this buddha around allows me to do just that. To say thank you for helping my dad, even a little, when I---his only daughter---couldn't do a single thing. It's so hard, it's just so hard..." She wept heavily now. It would've been presumptuous of me to reach out to her, as I was a stranger and a man; but at least I didn't move. I sat. I wanted her to know I was here when she stopped and wanted to share more. She wiped away her tears, and looked up: "I must've looked crazy whispering to that grave," she said. "Not at all," I said. "I was quite moved." She turned back to the grave: "I love you, Dad. I really do." She wept a little more. Then she wiped her tears and continued: "It's just---you want to think your father, your only father, would share his secrets with you one day: But I'll never hear his secrets. And he had the biggest secret of all: He was brutally killed in a foreign land, fighting a war he didn't believe could work, forging bonds with men he never knew before---who suddenly became the closest people in his life," she looked at me: "I mean the closest. The closest, sir. They were brothers. And seeing experiences none of us will every have or comprehend, and in a land whose language, culture, even heat was so totally different to him. He died from a shell, I'm told 'instantly', away from everyone he loved at home, and surrounded by brothers who became his other family. And now he's there---" she pointed to his grave, "under a piece of stone: And I want to hold him. I just want to hold him and tell him I love him. I want to say it to his face, not a piece of stone. But I can't. I'll never see his face. And I'll tell his secret to my children one day, but they won't know it either. No one will. I just hope someday I'll live long enough to have a better understanding of what he saw. I hope. I hope..." She picked up her bag, "thanks for listening: You were very patient." "Oh god," I said, "you were the patient one. I mean for what you've lived with all these years. Your separation. Thank you for sharing." "Patient?" she said, shaking her head: She sighed deeply. "Some days, I wanna scream, 'jump out of your grave and tell me what you saw, Dad! Don't leave me with silence! I hate the silence! Dad. Dad...'" She sighed. "I'm not as patient as you think." She bowed, blew a kiss to her dad's grave, kissed her hand and patted it on the ground, and left. I didn't move for a while. The breeze continued to rustle, the traffic continued to hum in the distance, with that chaotic mix of honks, screeches, zooms and such, mediated by lots of rich distance and air. And that same dog was barking, although I saw him at last, frolicking with his master down the street. It's trite to say it, but life goes on. It just goes on. And I wanted to say it to that grave: "Can you hear it, sir? The poetry of life: It's for you..." When the young woman was out of sight, I walked to her father's grave, and looked down. I wanted to say, "thank you," but didn't. I was embarrassed. And why? Why did I care what others thought? But then I realized my embarrassment went deeper than that: I was embarrassed because I wasn't his son or his brother, I never fought in battle, I was a world removed from him and all he saw, I was privileged by the random chance of a lottery, and I never enlisted, and he was in that grave while I was here, standing, alive, looking over him, and surrounded by the sweet symphony of life. I wanted to say, "this is for you: all of it, for you." Finally, I thought, "this is a blessed place". By which I meant the grass, the flowers, the trees, the whole earth---because it cradled this man in its midst. It was blessed by him, and others like him... To all who fell and died in battle in order to help others, and all those who came home alive but changed-for-life, my greatest, deepest gratitude. I wish everyone a peaceful Memorial Day (which really should be remembered every day), with the hope there won't be a need for any such remembrances ever, ever again... ------------------