A young boy arrived today. Maybe nineteen. Blonde hair, blue eyes and half his face blown away. Blood was caked to his hair and with his one eye he stared at me like a frightened child, his hand grasping. But there are others, many others. I could see the loops of his small intestine. Looked like eels and I thought it only I could toss them back into the sea, put them back where they belong. He trembled, his lips were cracked and dry in the cold and I gave him water and a shot of morphine. I tied the empty syrette around his neck, moved on to the next litter. They were like jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces or pieces in the wrong places. Dozens of them. Dozens more on the way.
I would tell you they died without pain or suffering; I'd tell you they died with dignity and honor; I'd tell you they died with stoic courage. If it would make you feel better. But they died in towns without names, in conditions below poverty, among odors and smell of urine and feces and decaying flesh, the stale breath of death upon their lips. And to think of the concern, of me becoming a nurse, of the prurient sights I might see, that this was argued. Mother and father. Afraid of what I might see. Afraid of what it might make me in the eyes of others. What can I tell them now of the eyes of others? Between what happens here and what is reported back home is as the ocean between us.
I lost Virgil. He died in my arms. No one can tell me the chary lies we tell the survivors. He suffered in his last hours. Pain unspeakable. Drugged such to make me wonder of his last words, what they meant, if he even knew who I was, if he even knew what he was saying. This is the doubt that eats you from the inside. The question that can never be answered, that rolls in your mind night and day, that you are reminded of on a daily basis, in the flesh and blood and sinew of the next young boy who is going where you wish you could go. Where, when I returned, my blonde haired boy had gone.
Art by Andrew Jones
17 comments:
Trée -
The writing in this piece is superb! I actually got gooseflesh while reading it.
Did you read Trudeau's "Johnny Got His Gun"? I read it as a high school student - on my own and for no other reason that it called to me. It greatly shaped my views on war and propelled me onto my path as a ProPeace type. No...it's not because I'm still a "hippie chick". It was because of a piece of writing that struck me so deeply - viserally - that it literally changed my consciousness the moment the words hit my awareness.
You have such a piece here. Reading this type of work could change another generation who's watching another 'war' played out on another battle field via High Def.
Grace, I haven't read that book but now you've got me wanting to. If I could, I would hug you for this comment. In my current state of unemployment, I long to feel significant. Your comment means the world to me. Thank you.
(((Trée))) Long distance, my friend, from California to Tennesse.
And I know you know this...but maybe just a gentle reminder? You are important and loved and purposeful because of who you ARE - not because of what you do (or don't) do.
Hang in there :)
(and yeah, read it! it's a small book but it's absolutely...well, you'll see.)
Thanks Grace. I'll take all the hugs I can get. :-)
Trée,
Again I read and find myself rereading, then coming back an hour later and rereading this. I am so drawn in by this. I can't explain it, part of me feels as though I have a bond with Mary, and yet another part envys her. I read this I wonder why I envy her. Her one true love is dead. Gone. Never to be seen or heard from again. How could I envy pain and heartbreak? And then, as I write this, I think I understand. Part of that, is to KNOW that you were also loved back by that person, and to know that you were on his mind, from that night in the ambulance to the second he died. To know that her life, her thoughts, and her feelings, were more important to him, than his own life. As I recall his dying words were "I'm a mess....will you wait for me..." Such a powerful piece. Such feeling. I am rambling away from THIS post. Sorry.
I can feel Mary moving around, doing her job, numb, oblivious to her surrounding. Yet, noticing every detail. I have times where I find myself walking around in this manner. Its hard to explain, but I feel numb and hyper-sensitive at the same time.
Sigh
Enough of my meaningless rambles.
H
Looking forward to the next chapter.
Forgot to mention how much I liked the accompanying image.
Thanks for sharing these.
(-:
Lady of the Lakes, there is something powerful about Mary's situation that I can't quite put my finger on. She is adrift. Virgil is gone. We see that with each passing day, she grow further from her parents and further from the person she was just a handful of months before. Her powers of observation are keen, trenchant, cutting; and this knife of a mind cuts the hand that holds it as she dissects the days. We both know her yet she remains unknowable.
Thanks for the kind words. I too look forward to the next post. :-)
You know, I want to go back to the very first post in this series. The one where she uses the F word. At the time, I put it in there to show that the woman now was different than than the woman before. Before the war, she would have never uttered that word or used it to describe coital relations. I got some heat for its use. I stood by it then and I stand by it now. Just as my own mother did not understand the vulgar use, its purpose to tell the story, the information it contained (I did not use it lightly or without consideration and thought). And I imagine that Mary's parents would react as my own. They would not understand. And how could they? So the riff between them naturally grows and there is a friction. To her parents, Mary is still their little girl and will always be their little girl who should have never been a nurse, that unbecoming profession which embarrassed them. But that Mary dies in France. It dies as surely as Virgil died, as all those other young boys died. So imagine the loneliness. Imagine finding someone who knows you as no one else knows you, as if they have the one and only key, and you lose them, you lose them before the door is hardly unlocked. And the winds of fate slams the door shut and the key slips into the sea of the war, lost.
WOW
WHOA
I think that just described me. My life. My inability to please my parents. To have no one understand me, what makes me tick, what makes me smile, what makes me, me. Actually, the one person on this earth that truly does understand me seems a universe away.
I absolutely loved that first post. And as crazy as this sounds, think that my life changed with that post, and with that word.
We all grow, as children we hope our parents will accept and nurture our decisions, just as parents we hope to do the same for our children. Sometimes this can be difficult, but we MUST learn to accept people for who they are, and who they become as they move through life. If we don't accept them, we are telling them they are not worth our acceptance. (This needs cleaning up, but I am unable to express my thoughts as well as you.):-) All I know is that 1944 is making me more aware of the person that I am, and the person who I want to be. And like Mary, I feel very alone right now. And if I told this to the people who know me, they would not understand. How can I feel alone in a house full of children, and family. I am only now seeing that it is because they really don't know anything about me, only the person they want me to be. At one point you commented that my identification with Mary was intereting and intriguing, and I agree. In some way she is helping me find "me".
Eargerly awaiting the next chapter.
I think FB is interesting in this regard. I'm reconnecting with classmates I've not seen in a quarter century. They have lived lives and now have children older than they were when I last saw them. Grown men and woman in their mid to late forties. Some of them grandparents. Yet, I see them as the high school kids I knew, as the last time I saw them and I find myself thinking they have not changed, just that their bodies have aged. Now, when I apply this same standard to myself, if I am exactly the same as I was thirty years ago, the answer seems absurd.
Parents I think have the greatest difficulty seeing the change in growth in a child. I've seen eighty year old mothers calling their sixty year old retired sons, "baby." And you just know that in their eyes, this old retired man is still the baby they held fifty-nine years ago. So powerful are these early images. So ingrained they become such that if we are not careful, we find we are interacting with our images instead of the real living breathing person in front of us. And herein lies the conflict. The friction. How can you talk to me when you don't even know who I am. And you don't know who I am because you refuse to let go of old images. This is the challenge. To know that each night, we die to the day. And each morning we rise anew, to the day.
I want to at once crawl inside of your imagery and yet resist it with everything both physical and emotional that I am. I am convinced that you are someone very significant. Do you know that at least in some moments, when the wind is right, when you are turned in just the right direction? You are significant. Timeless. You will line shelves.
Erin, let me be as direct and blunt as I can. Each day I struggle to remain significant in this life. One day at a time. Each sunrise is a victory. I wish it were different.
Thank you for your kind words. I live by this kindness.
Live by something else. It is real. Let it be.
You might as well be asking me to let go of my life preserver in the middle of an ocean.
This post was quite simply amazing. The war images repelled and repulsed me as the heart images drew me in deeper. Amazing.
Thanks Jen. :-)
I have listened to this a half dozen times now becoming more consumed with speechless awe for every one. Your awareness and perception, your artistry and powers of pursuasion, the depth of your touch, the engagement that you summon, the passion and beauty of your expression are inexhaustible. I was literally walking on air as I returned home, knowing that I could sit here undisturbed for a significant length of time, something which as you know has been beyond my grasp too often recently, my fingers were flexed ready to type and now I am almost wishing that the first post I came to had been less awe-inspiring. The comments upon this post are as wonderful as they are similar to many of the thoughts and responses that I had. Of the value and quality and influence. So much so I have an overwhelming urge to assure you of things that are based purely on a personal belief of how the world works. The urge to quote Hamlet in things between heaven and earth. To mention retrospect and trust, purpose and meaning and destiny. Of knowing the truth of something without being able to support it conclusively. I simply don't know how to respond as I bear witness to so divine a gift. From beginning to end, heart, mind and soul, unconditionally, undividedly, completely, impossibly awed.
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