Shifting Perspective
For me, last weekend
was one of those that each of us needs every once in a while. I watched Legends
of the Fall with Daniel before he went to bed, and then found Flags of our Fathers on HBO
in-progress. I caught the last
hour. I realized while watching those
two movies that I had turned some corner.
I don’t remember when this happened.
There was no accompanying fanfare, as I might have expected as a younger
man. It even took me the better part of
an hour to accurately identify exactly what had just come about.
Context: My mother, Jean, was an exceptional
woman. I spent forty years and twenty
some-odd days learning from her. She
taught me living, loving, accepting, raising children, cooking, crisis
response, and civility in the face of fear, panic, meanness, and anger; the
lessons were endless and her example remains with me every moment. She left her mark on each person who loved
her, and each of us would chew our leg off rather than feel unable to live up
to our own expectations in light of the example that she set for us.
Jean passed away in October of 2010. She had a massive heart-attack, and I rushed
back to Texas from Twentynine Palms as quickly as I possibly could. She had been resuscitated in the Emergency
Room, but it had taken them a very long time to affect that, longer than her
brain could go without oxygen. Thus, she
was alive but not present by the time I arrived. Her body took a few days to pass, and I
accepted the deathwatch at her bedside each night. It was somehow fitting, I reckon, that it
became my lot to be with her in the small hours. She loved peace and quiet when she was among
us, and there is nothing so peaceful, nor so quiet, as a hospital room at
0300. As was her wont, my mother held on
for a number of days and nights. I don’t
remember how many, as those days have become a single, jagged wound. The night that her body finally gave in to
the pressures placed upon it, I was beside her, reading. I did not notice that she had left for some
time. There was no fanfare, as I did expect,
unreasonably, as a younger man. I kissed
her forehead. I said goodbye. I told her that I loved her. I then made the walk down to the nurses’
station to inform the staff that my mother was dead.
I say these things, partly out of the
empathic need to finally describe that night, but mostly because I realize
something now, almost four years later, which is vitally important. We each go through life preparing ourselves
for something. The training that
we conduct, the education that we receive, the preparations that we make all
generally carry with them some expectation that we will be tested at some
point. That we will use this training
and education. That these preparations
we have made will be called upon. Those
of us who made careers out of being Marines naturally assume that this trial
will take place in war, or something very much like it. In that assumption, I was only partially
correct.
I came home from Iraq in 2006 with the
satisfaction that I had acquitted myself well.
That the training and preparations were appropriate to what was expected
of me by my boss, myself, and the Marines under my charge. I see now that Iraq was ALSO preparation for
what would come. It prepared me
emotionally for the hardest thing I’ve ever done. All of that training, education, preparation,
and experience was necessary for me to see my mother off into the next world,
and to deliver her eulogy.
So it might seem a trivial
way for me to realize something that had been staring me in the face for quite
some time. I’ve watched Legends of the Fall probably forty or-so
times, but I’ve always identified most closely with “Tristan”, the character who
refused to bend his identity to match the conventions of his time. This time, I inexplicably found myself
identifying very closely with the patron of the family “Col. Ludlow”. (This might have been aided by my son’s regular
comparisons between the Col. and myself.)
Then, as I watched Flags of our
Fathers, I found myself identifying with the aged Corpsman, John Bradley
rather than his son, who sought to understand his father. In either case, this represented a change in
my perception. Both of the elder
characters had reached their allotted four-score and ten years and their time
of trial had become the mentorship of their adult children. Their wars were over. It was all prologue to their last years spent
as the patrons of their respective families.
This was a nuance to human existence that I had never really considered.
Maybe this is part
of a trap of my own making. I’ve always
wondered why I made it through Iraq twice.
Since then, I’ve wondered what would pass for a death for me. A senile old man? Wandering through a home in a robe with a
walker grafted onto my fists? I had kind
of surrendered to the idea that all of this time after my war was just a long
epilogue. I’ll just keep doing my bit to
train the next generation of Marines to go and fight (and HOPEFULLY help them
to combine arms in a meaningful way), die in harness, have them dump my ashes
over Trench 1 at 410A, and call it good.
Carry on.
I don’t know, maybe
a lot of veterans think that way.
But after watching
the end of Flags of our Fathers, as I
was washing up before bed, I heard Ma asking me from somewhere deep in my
consciousness, “what are Joel, Sarah, and
Daniel going to say about you someday, when it’s their turn to do for you what
you did for me? What have you earned, in
that respect? You used to write, what
have you written for them to have, after you’re gone? ”
Then I heard, “the legacy you leave will be determined by
the effort you give every day. It is
yours. Own it.”
I bought a new
laptop to replace my balky tablet the next day.
It’s all
training. All of it is preparation. Every word, every lesson. It’s preparation for WHATEVER comes next. The test comes every day. There is no epilogue because apparently God is
not interested in the literary aesthetic. I have a feeling that his symmetry is on a
much, much larger scale.
Earn it.
Unclean
