VA Day (Goodbyes)
Mar. 21st, 2010 03:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yonkersveteranDENVER, COLORADO, USA.
[Todd Wainio walks me to the train, savoring the 100 percent tobacco Cuban cigarettes I’ve bought him as a parting gift.]
Yeah, I lose it sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe an hour. Doctor Chandra told me it was cool though. He counsels right here at the VA. He told me once that it’s a totally healthy thing, like little earthquakes releasing pressure off of a fault. He says anyone who’s not having these “minor tremors” you really gotta watch out for.
It doesn’t take much to set me off. Sometimes I’ll smell something, or somebody’s voice will sound really familiar. Last month at dinner, the radio was playing this song, I don’t think it was about my war, I don’t even think it was American. The accent and some of the terms were all different, but the chorus…“God help me, I was only nineteen.”
[The chimes announce my train’s departure. People begin boarding around us.]
Funny thing is, my most vivid memory kinda got turned into the national icon of the victory.
[He motions behind us to the giant mural.]
That was us, standing on the Jersey riverbank, watching the dawn over New York. We’d just got the word, it was VA Day. There was no cheering, no celebration. It just didn’t seem real. Peace? What the hell did that mean? I’d been afraid for so long, fighting and killing, and waiting to die, that I guess I just accepted it as normal for the rest of my life. I thought it was a dream, sometimes it still feels like one, remembering that day, that sunrise over the Hero City.
[Todd Wainio walks me to the train, savoring the 100 percent tobacco Cuban cigarettes I’ve bought him as a parting gift.]
Yeah, I lose it sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe an hour. Doctor Chandra told me it was cool though. He counsels right here at the VA. He told me once that it’s a totally healthy thing, like little earthquakes releasing pressure off of a fault. He says anyone who’s not having these “minor tremors” you really gotta watch out for.
It doesn’t take much to set me off. Sometimes I’ll smell something, or somebody’s voice will sound really familiar. Last month at dinner, the radio was playing this song, I don’t think it was about my war, I don’t even think it was American. The accent and some of the terms were all different, but the chorus…“God help me, I was only nineteen.”
[The chimes announce my train’s departure. People begin boarding around us.]
Funny thing is, my most vivid memory kinda got turned into the national icon of the victory.
[He motions behind us to the giant mural.]
That was us, standing on the Jersey riverbank, watching the dawn over New York. We’d just got the word, it was VA Day. There was no cheering, no celebration. It just didn’t seem real. Peace? What the hell did that mean? I’d been afraid for so long, fighting and killing, and waiting to die, that I guess I just accepted it as normal for the rest of my life. I thought it was a dream, sometimes it still feels like one, remembering that day, that sunrise over the Hero City.
