I have tried and tried since yesterday to write something appropriate for today's post but I cannot come up with anything. For all my ability to blather on in mind numbing fashion about things that are generally not important, I fall flat on my face in failure as I try and express my feelings today. I just keep thinking about my very dear friend Bill. I guess everything I have to say is etched in the scars of his face from an explosion that almost took his life.
Today I should be interviewing someone for a story. I just don’t have the internal fortitude. But today, Bill, I think about the first time I saw you. I think about that smile of yours. I remember how I instantly knew most of it was just out of place. I close my eyes and in my mind I place my hand gently on your aging face. I feel the jagged outline of a scar. I feel the wrinkled skin drawn tight over the side of your forehead. My fingertips receive a sudden and cold impersonal shock as I touch the patch that covers what was once an eye. I know you are still self conscious about it. I imagine you would wince a bit as I touched the inflamed jagged lines that cross from the side of your face down your neck. I know they have healed but they seem to hold so much pain. I am sorry you lost your youth, your innocence and so much more. I can see the look on your face as you have shared with me the hell you endured. I can see the pain and anguish as if you were there all over again. I am sorry you left that 18 year old boy back in a country you had never heard of. I am sorry he did not return, but instead he sent home an aged, battered, scarred and cynical old man. A man that would none the less make the same sacrifice all over again. To the man I have come to call by the term brother, I am sorry it was you and not me, I love you that much.
This day is not about left or right, republicans or democrats, liberals or conservatives. This day is about the untold numbers of men and women, kids mostly, who have given of themselves what no one has a right to ask.
To all the men and women who have served, or are serving our country in time of war, I give a solemn and heartfelt thank you.
Otter
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3 comments:
Well put, Otter. I, too, send my thanks to those who have served for our country.
Now you have me boo-hooing.
I too, thank those who have served their country. My father was in a prison camp in Germany for 6 months in WWII. I was too little, but it must have just been awful for the family to have someone "missing in action". . . not to mention how bad it was for him. And, of course, my family's recent loss is still so very fresh.
Thank you for your story.
Otter
I was married to a Vietnam Vet and I still remeber waking up to hisscreaming. These men give so much of themselves to defend our country and so often come back scarred both outside and in. Thank you for sharing I hope the next time anyone thinks of war right or wrong they remeber the men who serve not just the cause.
Wendy
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