Honor soldiers’ deaths by living

SOUL FOOD

“Whatsoever things are true...whatsoever things are just...whatsoever

things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be

any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

-- Philippians 4:8

Something that haunted my father for most of his life, so he was

never fully at peace, was this: He never understood why he lived

through wars while other men died.

He didn’t talk about it. He kept it tucked away, not unlike the

way people will tuck away their wisdom teeth or gall stones -- things

once part of them, if painfully so, too much part of them to let go

of.

Now and again something would open that secret place and some of

my father’s pain would slip out where I could see it.

He would fall asleep in his chair while watching and old war

movie. He’d snore and I’d wake him. And he’d wake with such wildness

I’d know I’d awakened him from fighting in some combat long past.

I’d stand there in the dark with this man I did not know. I’d wait

for him as he traveled through time and space back to our living

room.

Finally he’d see me. His eyes were my father’s again. He’d press a

kiss onto the top of my head and say, “Goodnight sweetheart, time for

bed.”

In 1962 a boy named Ricky, who drove the Helms Bakery truck that

stopped everyday in front of my school, was drafted. A woman about my

mother’s age drove the truck after that.

A few weeks after Christmas that year she told us that Ricky

wouldn’t be coming back. It took me a few days to realize he was

dead.

When I told my father, he didn’t comfort me that way I expected he

would. Instead, he said, “Well, that boy is not the first and he will

not be the last and you had better know that.”

I’d find him sometimes lost in the pages of Life Magazine or

Newsweek. His jaw would be slack and his breathing labored like

someone who had just gotten very bad news.

I could tell he didn’t hear me when I came into the room. If I

hadn’t been too scared to know, I could have asked him what he was

looking at.

It wasn’t just the pictures I could see there on the pages; those

were just windows he traveled through. I’d pass through room and let

him, a man I didn’t quite know, journey to places far away.

More than 20 years later, while I lived in Germany, my father came

to visit me. We drove through Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium,

Holland and Luxemburg. We passed battlefields and war memorials,

concentration camps and cemeteries, day after day.

My father never wanted to stop. He said he’d seen enough death.

Enough cemeteries.

He talked about his first plane ride during World War II, how

beautiful the flak had looked -- just like fireworks, he said. Then

he told me how, he thought, we best honor the dead.

Live, he said. Live fully. Though I don’t think he ever quite

managed to do that himself.

I think he too often traveled back to fight his battles again, as

though he could change the course of history and bring the men who

died beside him home.

Because he couldn’t, I think he buried a piece of his heart with

them.

A few days ago I listened to the wife of a soldier interviewed on

television. She said the last time she talked to her husband he had

told her this: Keep cherishing, keep enjoying the everyday precious

things of life -- a breeze, the sun, a blue sky, a starry night, the

faces of our children.

I listened to those words and I heard my father.

We all need to do what that soldier asked of his wife, just as

much as we possibly can. It’s one victory we can hang onto in this

war.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.