As I write this, I am looking out my window at our American flag moving gently in a breeze with a desert sunset behind it. We put the flag up for Veteran’s Day weekend. My father, my father-in-law, and several uncles served in WWII. My husband was in the Air Force, and my brother gave twenty years of his life to the Navy. I also have several cousins who are veterans. I appreciate the sacrifice of all veterans and their families. I cannot forget one cousin, though, who never had the chance to grow old beyond his military years. Johnny joined the Marines instead of waiting to be drafted during the Vietnam War. October 23, 2018, marked fifty years since he was killed over there. He was twenty years old and had been there for twenty-two days.
I was seven when he died, and I only have fleeting memories of him being alive. I remember him smiling at me as he went past with friends at his house. He played in the high school band. I remember baking him a birthday cake in my Easy Bake Oven and randomly putting a tiny plastic seal with a ball on its nose on top. I remember him taking me for a ride in his car and how easily he shifted the gears. I was fascinated because my parents only drove cars with automatic transmissions.
My memories of his death are more vivid. The first time I ever heard my dad cry was when we got the phone call. I remember going to the wake but staying with friends during the funeral. Our friends’ house was down the street from the funeral home, and my brother and I could not get ourselves to leave their front-room window. We strained to see what we could, and I jumped with every shot of the Marine’s gun salute. I remember begging my mom for a picture of Johnny to put on a poster I was making with a poem I wrote. I asked my mom how to spell “bear” like when something is hard to “bear.” I marched back and forth in our living room singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,” and the song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” played through my head for weeks, only I knew Johnny was not coming home.
Some people may think, “That was fifty years ago. You should be over it by now,” and in some ways, they are right. I don’t think of him every day like I used to, but I still think of him. I see his nephew who looks just like him, and I get an idea of what Johnny would have looked like at 25 or 30. I meet Vietnam Veterans who went on to marry and have children and careers, and I wonder what might have been. The truth is that time does not heal all wounds. We just learn to live with them. Those wounds become a part of who we are, and that is one way that lost loved ones live on.