Between Him and God

They began to trickle in to the gate area, some in uniform some in civilian clothes but all carrying the tell-tale Army camouflage backpacks. They were young. Very young. Wide-eyed and willing to serve, not yet having faced the front and felt the ravages of actual battle. One was wearing a Nirvana shirt. He wasn’t even born when Nirvana still existed. “Please don’t let me cry on this flight.” That’s the text I shot off to my mom and three sisters as the gate area became packed with young Army men. And then entered a veteran, likely a young Vietnam Vet or perhaps Gulf War. He wore a leather vest with various Army and Harley patches. Had I not had my seven-year-old daughter with me I would have quickly made my way to the nearest bathroom to have a good cry before boarding the flight. But I couldn’t do that.

The same phrase entered my head, the one that haunts me every time I see a service member or recall my father’s time in the Army – “between me and God.” That was his mantra. He likely repeated it to himself the last forty years of his life. I say the “last forty years” because that’s how I think of my dad’s existence. Before the war and after. He repeated that phrase to us several times in the years and months before his death. It referred to his greatest demon, the one he met in the jungles of Vietnam, the one he would never divulge or let go of.

I thanked the young soldiers for their service and I touched the shoulder of the older veteran, thanking him for his. Any time I see an older veteran I want to tell them about my dad, how he served two years in the jungles, how he earned a bronze star for saving a boat, how he came back forever changed. But I don’t because that’s not playing by the rules. We don’t talk to strangers that way, especially in passing on an airplane. So I just settled for a touch on the shoulder or a handshake and a thank you. And I wonder what demons he’s living with.

I sit on the plane surrounded by these young men and women willing to serve our country in a way I’ve never been. I pray over them – for their protection, that they never meet the demons so many others have, and selfishly that my own children never follow in their footsteps.

We sing songs about them, tell stories about them, have parades and special days for them, but few of us will ever understand what they carry. It’s an indoctrination into a life and existence that we wouldn’t wish on our enemies. And yet our enemies carry the demons as well. That’s the result of war. Men, women, civilians – in the jungles, deserts, mountains, trenches – all must forever suffer the consequences of brokenness. Some may return home with whole bodies, having escaped the physical damages of battle yet all return fighting mental brokenness. Those who deny it are simply avoiding reality.

My father never revealed what happened in those jungles. He said he’d take it to his grave and he kept his promise. He did tell stories and they were graphic, something out of a high-budget war movie. I wonder what could possibly be worse. In a way, I’m thankful he never told us. I wonder if his carrying that burden on his own was a huge sacrifice he made for our family. For years I’ve regretted that I couldn’t carry it for him or with him to lessen the load but now I realize that he kept his secret because he knew it was too heavy for the rest of us. He was brave, as he was in the jungles, as he was for forty years after the demons latched on, as he was when he slipped away from us.

As I sit next to my sweet baby girl, the one who was born six weeks after my dad passed, I think of the joy she would have brought him. Today she’s sporting unicorn shoes, a unicorn dress, and a unicorn backpack for the trip. He would have laughed to no end over her style choices. He would have hugged and kissed her, told her he loved her, held her hand and gone to grandparent’s breakfast at her school. He would have done all the things his demons never let him do for his own children.

And so I pray again – let these young soldiers find solace in their families. Let them unburden to trusted people when they need to. Let them be fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters who live full, unbroken lives after their tours are done. Let them have nothing that stays just between them and God.

His First "I Love You"

As far as I can remember, I was eighteen years old the first time my dad told me he loved me. It was after my high school graduation and it came with an awkward hug and kiss on the head. It was completely momentous and completely too late. I was student senate president and had just given the student address. I was on cloud nine, feeling all the excitement that graduates feel on that night. But then my dad did that thing and distracted me for the rest of the night. In a sense it made me angry. How dare he choose my special night to do the one thing I’d dreamed he’d do since I was old enough to think about it.

Five hours -- that’s how far I was moving from home to go to college. I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to get out of the small town in which I grew up. Couldn’t wait to start a new life at college. Couldn’t wait to get away from the uncomfortable relationship with the living ghost that was my dad. I suppose his profession of love toward my twin sister and me that graduation night was his way of saying he’d miss us. I don’t really know though since he never said it. When he and my mom dropped us at college in the fall, he responded with the same awkward hug, kiss on the head, and “I love you.”

I didn’t know what all that meant. Those words and that affection from him were so foreign to me. Maybe he was realizing for the first time what he’d lost, and what he was still losing. The time he’d wasted during our childhood – time spent drinking and avoiding instead of spending time with his kids. If that’s the case, I can’t imagine the enormity of his regret. To this day it hurts my heart to think about what he must have felt. Throughout our time in college, Dad would make grand gestures. Our shared car would have problems and our mechanic father would drive the five hours to and from our college in one day to make the necessary repairs. I didn’t understand why he would do such a thing when we were perfectly capable of taking our car to a mechanic. He wouldn’t stay for lunch or dinner nor any longer than it took to fix the car. He would also give us money that I knew he didn’t have to spare. Now I understand that he was trying to make up for time lost. He either didn’t understand or couldn’t follow through on what we always knew though. We just wanted his love. We didn’t need any grand gestures. We needed him to apologize, to admit that he wasn’t the father we needed him to be. We needed him to get help and heal the wounds caused by his time as a soldier in Vietnam. We just needed him to get better, so he could be a “normal” dad. Whatever normal looked like for a family touched by PTSD for more than three decades. We buried my dad eight years ago today. I think about the military funeral, about the cemetery, about all the men and women buried there with him. And I wonder how many of them also had trouble saying "I love you."

His Lunchbox

I can’t remember the color or what it looked like. You’d think I’d remember something that significant. This thing that seemingly controlled our lives. This symbol that noted what our days would be like, whether he would be just a fleeting ghost in the house or whether he would be the drunk-but-present, non-father-figure we hated to see.

That damned lunchbox. I think it was a small lunch-sized Igloo and I’m probably just making up that it was red and white because that was the classic ‘80s Igloo. But it was the kind with the titling triangle lid that slid down to reveal the interior. Everyday he took that box to work and every night he came home, emptied it, and put it in its place of honor on top of the fridge. My 4^th grade self knew that was something important to my father. And I knew that if I was to communicate with him it had to be via that lunchbox. During the week when it was parked on the fridge I knew he would see a note placed inside it, and Dad would be sober enough to read it. Not on the weekends. Not only did he not use the lunchbox on the weekends but he wouldn’t be sober enough to give my note a fair chance. So, I devised my plan. I would write a letter that would save our family – one that would spell everything out and change our lives. It would completely result in our dad having the epiphany of his life and becoming the father we all wanted him to be.

I pulled out a school spiral and began composing the most pleading, eloquent letter any 9-year-old had ever written. I begged him to stop drinking. I begged him to stop smoking. I begged him to love us. I explained how much it hurt my feelings that he spilled his beer on my Bible. I pleaded with him not to get drunk on the weekends so we could do things that normal families do – things like fishing and camping and taking trips. Or at least that’s what I assumed normal families did. I signed it, “I love you, Dad. Love, Amy.” Then I ripped it from the spiral, leaving the classic messy edges that still annoy me to this day. I carefully folded the paper, waited for him to go to bed, then pulled a chair over to the yellow fridge. I placed the paper in his lunchbox then went to bed, sure that by the next afternoon our lives would be different. This would be the pivotal moment for our family. He would hear such wisdom and love in his little girl’s words and he would beg us for forgiveness. We would soon be a real family.

The next day, I woke like it was Christmas morning. Dad was already gone to work, as he was each morning when we woke. The lunchbox was gone. I couldn’t wait for him to get home, for him to be changed, for him to pick me up and be the dad I’d always wanted. The kind of dad that does things like picks up his daughter and hugs her. But something caught my eye as I walked by the kitchen table. In the corner next to the table was the trashcan. That huge freaking black industrial-sized trashcan which was the only thing that could keep up with a family of seven. On top of the trash was torn up pieces of paper. The edges had that annoying fraying from being torn from a notebook, and my handwriting was on it. There would be no change, no hugs, no dad stuff that day nor the days after. I can’t imagine what went through his mind when he read my letter but he must have been angry – enough to rip it to shreds. Who does that? What kind of father would rip up his daughter’s heartfelt letter? A father with PTSD. One who sees everything as a threat. One who is barely hanging on to sanity and sees change as the enemy. I didn’t understand that as a child but as an adult child of a veteran with PTSD I understand it all too well. I understand the anxiety and the depression and the longing to control the world around me. I understand the fear of change and the anger that comes when change occurs and it’s not my idea. I understand that he would have chosen differently if he could have. He would have scooped me up and kissed my face and became the dad we all desperately wanted. That’s not how it went though, and I understand it now.