letters and numbers

I know the artist. Her name is Jenn Hassin and I heard her story before she heard mine. She took a class with Karl years ago and he was surprised by her story so he came home and gave it to me. We ran into her again when we did The Telling Project and we gave her our stories.

We were invited to a send off for this art piece, titled Letters of Sacrifice. Over the base is chicken wire and inserted into the chicken wire are condolence letters. There are 6,820 condolence letters. I was one of five people who each added a condolence letter this weekend, for the five most recent deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I looked on Military Times for Yauch and O'Brien, Williams and Chevy, Martinez and Rice, but I could not find their numbers. Jenn pointed out to us which rows corresponded with which years, 2006 - 2008 comprising the largest section. 2006 - 2008 being when Williams and Chevy died, when Karl drove over a bomb, when I shared a cigarette with a friend who was sent home by friendly fire, when I laid on the floor and cried because I didn't want to see any of those letters.

Jenn said she is often asked about the empty chicken wire at the top of the piece. It is an unfinished piece, she points out, because men and women are still dying in ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. She pointed out a letter she inserted with the family of the dead soldier. Karl shrugged while I looked for the numbers of his friends. He didn't need to know where they were, he said, because he knew where they were. I don't know what he meant: they are in his heart? in the ether? in the ground? I didn't ask, because apparently I was the only one who wanted to assign names to the letters. It's easy for me to go down the rabbit hole: when I start looking on Military Times for men Karl knew, I start searching for men and women from my home town and the town I went to high school in. I am trying to know them, these 6,820 people I will never meet.

If we took a moment of silence for each of these people, we would be silent for 4 days, 17 hours, and 40 minutes... I am tempted. If we donated one day of our life to each of these men and women, we would spend 18 years, 8 months, and 1 week devoting our lives to them, which is funny, given that some of them were younger than 18 years, 8 months, and 1 week old when they died...

Obviously I'm using the term "funny" loosely here. My definition of "funny" is much different than it used to be. As we stood around Letters of Sacrifice, shivering in the cold, a Vietnam veteran cried, but Karl and I laughed, not at the sacrifice before us, but about the life around us. We can stand next to a memorial for 6,820 service members who've died and laugh because we carry them with us every day. I did not know there were so many of them, but they are with me. They are in the ether. They are the air I breathe. They are my freedom of speech, my grief for Karl, my hope for my children.

I did not know them. Any of them. I don't know if they were good men or bad men, good women or bad women. I don't know if they drank too much or drove too fast or fed the homeless or walked little old ladies across the street.

As we stood there, someone asked Karl what he wished civilians knew about the 6,820 letters before him and he mentioned the webs that spread from them to their families, friends, and communities. Then he mentioned that there were innocent lives lost on the other side and webs that sprang from them. Those people, on the other side, killed by our side, they are also the air I breathe, my hopes, my fears.

All these lives. They are the beat of my heart, the glance I throw Karl when I see him across a crowded room, the hug I give my children at night when I tuck them into bed. They are my gratitude that Karl is here and my anger that he is missing. They are the sounds of taps and the tears in my eyes when I see homecoming videos. They aren't anyone I know, but they are every one of us.

if wishes were fishes

I know two women whose veteran spouses have committed suicide in the past year. I think that couldn't happen to us, but I wonder how it could have happened to them, guys who were "doing so well." Sometimes, for a moment, I think I might get it.

Tonight at bedtime our daughter punched and kicked Karl, who decided that meant our daughter couldn't watch Power Rangers for two years. Yup, two years. Our eldest child practiced some words for the spelling bee but when I left to deal with our daughter, they decided they didn't want to practice with daddy. So they started acting up and ignoring him.

I calmed our daughter down and went back to our eldest and told them it was bedtime.

"You can just go straight downstairs," I told Karl who was close to the end of his fuse.

As I sat in our eldest's bed, I told them they needed to try harder.

"But Daddy's a jerk!"

"Well, he has better reason than you," I said, trying to be gentle.

"There's no good reason to be a jerk!"

"Maybe not... but he has lots of bad memories of war and it's hard for him sometimes to be nice."

"But! The war was so long ago!"

I guess it seems so long ago because he got back from Iraq (the second time) when they were 2.

"Have you ever seen one of your friends die?" I ask, already knowing the answer, sighing at myself for asking this simple question, wondering if 9 is old enough to hear what I know I'm going to say.

"No."

"Okay, how long do you think it would take you to get over it if you watched one of your friends die?" It hurts me to ask them this, my baby, my tiny child, but I know they need to think it through if they're going to have any compassion for their father and the things he carries.

"Stop asking me this!" They have already realized that my questions are too hard, that they are out of their depth, that they don't want to spend a single second trying to imagine what their daddy has been though.

"Then," I continue, because there is so much more, "how long do you think it would take you to get over people shooting at you every day for a year?" I am simplifying things. He was in Iraq twice, for a year once and 15 months once and people were never shooting at him every single day for an entire year straight, but it is easy to imagine that out of 800 days in Iraq, he was shot at, at least once, for at least 365 days total.

My baby had pulled a blanket over her face, and they pulled it back down now and looked me in the eye.

"I wish Daddy hadn't driven over a bomb," they said in a thick voice.

My life flashed before my eyes - the medicaid and food stamps; the C&P exams; the award letter we received when he was finally rated 100% PT; the retro-payment; the house we bought; the days when we send the kids to school and have the luxury of sitting at home doing nothing; the financial security - and tears filled my eyes and slid down my cheeks.

"Me too, honey, me too, so much," I said, picturing Karl in high school, quick-witted and easily able to remember everything, the Karl they will never know.

They sat up and hugged me and we wiped away our own tears.

"I love Daddy and I think you love him too," (here I was interrupted with their incredulous "of course I do!") "and I know Daddy is trying his hardest. Sometimes our best sucks. Sometimes my best sucks," (here they wanted an example so I reminded them of when we were on vacation and I smacked their stomach because they wouldn't stop shrieking at me. For some reason both kids let me off the hook and forget my bad moments much easier than they forget Karl's.) "Sometimes Daddy's best sucks. Sometimes your best sucks. But we're all in this together and we just need to try a little harder."

They exclaimed "I'm sorry!" a few times. They are willing to give Karl a break when they remember that his life has been scary. I hugged them again and went downstairs.

Karl asked if I was okay and I tried not to cry as I told him that they had said they wished he hadn't driven over a bomb. At that moment, I thought about how hard it must be to have your wife and your children wish you were normal; how hard it must be to wish, every day, to just be normal, to be who you were before you drove over a bomb, or got shot, or became some new person that no one knew, least of all you. I thought about how it could sneak up on me when I thought we were having a normal day and I thought how it must sneak up on men and women who struggle with being damaged. I thought maybe I might understand how fucking hard that must be.

I don't though. I know how hard it is for me and how sad I think it is and how sad I think I would feel at trying, every day, to come to terms with who I am when maybe I would be someone slightly different, slightly worse, every day.

I don't know if war is courageous. Sometimes, I'm sure it is. However, I know that waking up every day, knowing the world is a terrifying place, and putting one foot in front of the other (if you still have them both) is courageous.

Today, before I cried about Karl's brain, I laughed about it. A new friend came over to pick up her son, a friend of my daughter's, and we were talking about brain development.

"Brains are pretty important," she said.

"You can't live without them," Karl said.

"I don't know," I said, turning to Karl, "you seem to be doing pretty well."

He made another joke, one about his brain leaking out his ears every night as he slept and I told him he wasn't allowed to sleep anymore.

To clarify, I asked my new friend if she knew Karl had a neuro-degenerative brain injury. We travel in some of the same circles and she did know, but, she said, it made her more comfortable when I joked about it. I told another friend about this conversation later and she said she would never joke about Karl's brain the way that I do, but she understood that we joked about it and we seemed to have it figured out.

I don't think we have anything figured out. I wish he hadn't driven over a bomb.