Eight years later
In 2003 my father’s Army Reserve Quartermaster unit was put on active duty. He went away for about 5 or 6 months to train and help prepare his soldiers for the looming possibility of driving tanker trucks in a combat zone. Then came word that his unit was being mobilized.
“My father could die in this war” is the exact thought I had when he told me the news. I looked at that man in his pale-green DCUs, who I took for granted every day of my life for 19 years, and felt enveloped by his absence, by the uncertainty of his future and what it meant for mine. Never having attended a funeral, never having witnessed death, or experienced the death of a loved one, this is the closest I’ve ever been to feeling completely destroyed by the absolute lack of something so dear to me.
Two years before, my high school’s student body had gathered in the gym for Homecoming Court. It was dark and everybody was excited as the candidates—our friends, our crushes, our class leaders and social influencers—took the stage, each of their videos playing on a large projector screen on the far wall as they were announced. I was sitting on the bleachers just in front of Tyler Bleau and Audrey Roof, who were sophomore student class representatives at the time.
They were whispering about a plane flying into the Pentagon.
They explained what they knew to me, but I didn’t understand. They told me the words, “a plane flew into the Pentagon”, and I didn’t comprehend. It may as well have been unintelligible speech. I had no experience, no point of reference, no ability to make a connection between what they were saying to me and the reality of the situation.
“What are you talking about?” was all I could say.
And moments later, life went into slow motion as the dimmed gym lights switched to full brightness and shook the student body from a soft, fuzzy dream into a newly stark and chilling reality. The Homecoming Court assembly was dismissed and we all wandered confusedly down the school hallways. All the classroom televisions were on. Nobody made it back to their homeroom. We just stepped into the nearest room with a TV and watched as a plane flew into a World Trade Center tower.
I was speechless. I didn’t know how to react. What to say. Who to talk to. What this meant for the rest of the day. For our lives. I couldn’t begin to process the order of magnitude of the events that were unfolding in a city 1,000 miles away that I had never been to—a city often depicted as the backdrop for disaster movies. Horrible, heinous things were happening to tens of thousands of people, none of whom I knew. I felt bad. I also felt incredibly guilty for not feeling the kind of raw pain warranted by the gravity of the situation. But nobody I loved was hurt. Nobody I loved was affected. I’m not a patriot. These kinds of events, horrible as they are, had happened in years past, and were happening all over the world on a daily basis. But we don’t care because nobody we love is affected. Genocides pass as news. News. Just headlines. And few of us give more than a few thoughts to those events, those human lives. We are helpless. What can we do? We go on about our daily lives because the reality is that our own have not been interrupted.
Then there were my classmates who had been to New York City. Who did have family and friends who were directly affected. Who were trying to survive. Who were fighting for their lives. Who were fighting for the lives of others. Who, after only a couple months, came to the realization they would be fighting a war.
My dad was never deployed. He retired from the military after 20 years of service. He is alive and well and happy. We talked on the phone just last week. About his golf game and his hip injury. It’s one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with him. It was easy and comfortable. And I’m incredibly thankful that I’ve had 27 years to get to easy and comfortable.
Everybody deserves that time.
(Source: stewart-little.com)
