Fathers, Sons, Soldiers, and Poetry

My Granny swore she heard my name in her sleep the day I died. She said she woke up in a cold sweat long before daylight convinced something was wrong. Unable to sleep, she sat in her recliner and waited for the word that came sometime later that morning when my dad called with the news. She says all she asked was “is he alive or is he dead?” The answer was “Alive. But barely.”

Dad was a serving Colonel at the time, finishing out a nearly thirty year active duty career with the Louisiana Army National Guard. Each morning he woke before dawn, put on a uniform, and commuted nearly an hour and a half from our house in Northern St Tammany Parish to the state headquarters at Jackson Barracks in New Orleans. The morning after I died he was preparing to do just that when there was a surprise knock on the door. The Army sent his Executive Officer to deliver the news. I have no idea how early those poor soldiers had to wake up or how far they drove, but they were standing on the back porch of my parents home at 6am in Class A uniform. For years Dad had done death notifications and he knew all too well what was going on. He knew well enough to know that just because I was overseas didn’t mean the notification was about me, my brother was in training at Fort Hood and accidents happen all too often. His first question was “Is it Jeremy or Mark?” and then he asked the same thing my Granny asked him only a short time later. “Is he alive or is he dead?”

Living through dying is a funny thing. I can happily tell you about my accident from beginning to end. I can talk about how I panicked at the last second, planted my feet and pushed against a two and a half ton truck as if I could ever possibly stop it. I can describe how I wiggled my fingers and toes as soon as they got me unpinned or brag about how I walked away. I can tell you about how my belly flopped out, bloated and swelling like I was pregnant when I opened my body armor and describe the warm, wet feeling of blood as I sat down and it all came pouring out. If you’re a reader you already know about the ashy, cut, bleeding, bare feet of the first medic who came to my aid, the bright stars, the Catholic chaplain’s prayer and my Ranger sergeant major’s worried look. You know about my famous last words because I can tell all of this without any problem. The coma, the needles, the red headed nurse in blue scrubs, the tiger, the pain…I can give it all up with a smile, yet it’s hard to write about the moment the Army notified my family.

In fact the thought of it haunted me even before I understood what it had to have felt like. It made me choke up long before I had to tell my dad that his father had passed. It bothered me for years before I made my first official death notification as a Sheriff’s Deputy. The moment my father opened the door to find his XO standing on the back porch in Class A hurt me for years in a way that my own painful memories of that time didn’t. It’s still not easy to write about.

I lost my dad to cancer seven short years later. As his hero Kris Kristofferson wrote “seemed like just as we were growin’ close together he was gone.” He was so sick for so long that the news of his death didn’t hurt me nearly as much as the story of the day those soldiers came to his door. After his passing someone went into his computer and printed out everything he’d written, the blog posts that we knew about, but also musings and poetry that he'd kept mostly hidden. Someone put each page in a document protector and carefully put them in a white, three ring binder most likely stolen from a National Guard Armory somewhere. It sat, largely unread, for almost seventeen years until I found it hidden on a book shelf recently while I was searching for a picture.

Buried in that binder I found this untitled poem.

You have done it for others
You know what comes next
There’s a soldier at the door
All dressed in his best
The confusion and fear
All crowding your mind
You know there’s no use
In snivelling and whining
Your heart’s like a kettle drum
Hammering in your chest
You fear that poor soldier
All dressed in his best
Then something takes over
You feel sorry for him
For the first time you see
His eyes are red rimmed
The paper in his hand
It rattles and shakes
You wonder if his news
You’ll be able to take
With a strange detachment
You open your door
Your world has just changed
Forever more
He tenderly tells you
The words that you dread
You hear them scream and echo
Inside your head
His had is strong and gentle
As he does what he must
And the healing starts
At the feel of his touch
That soldier at the door
We’ll never forger
Strong and teary eyed
All dressed in his best

I’m not the person to judge poetry. I understand neither rhythm nor rhyme. This doesn’t feel to me like a “good” poem. Still it gutted me when I first read it. It still guts me to read these words about that awful day and I can’t help feeling like I had it easy in my coma, like my injuries were better than having to answer that knock at the door.

I was struck too how everything in the binder felt like a rough draft. There were some great ideas, a couple of good turns of phrase, a unique perspective and original writing voice but it all felt incomplete. Probably because it was. The entire binder was filled with half finished pieces and rough drafts. For whatever reason my dad hid his poetry away. He locked it in some forgotten corner of an unused room and like a potted plant in a basement apartment it just didn’t get enough light and love to really blossom. In 2008 when I first read this poem I was gutted by the painful memory of that awful day. Seventeen years later I was caught off guard by how sad I felt when I realized that it, and every other word in the binder, was unfinished. They’d never get a second draft. No one would ever read them.

And it struck me that was a damned shame. On a universal level, I’m becoming convinced that everyone’s words deserve at least a chance to be read, that there’s nothing sadder, nothing more wasteful, than phrases never uttered and stories untold. On a personal level I feel like losing dad also meant losing a piece of my story. There’s a line buried in there in a letter to my cousin that paints a picture of those early days, of the time when I was in my coma, that I never could.

“Jeremy may be dying. That was the word… I didn’t want you to see him like that. If he died I wanted you to remember him as young, and strong, and full of life. I didn’t want you to see what the world had done.”

I could never write that line but without it my story is incomplete.

I’d secretly known for years that my dad was a poet because I found some verses once hidden away in the places where fathers hide secrets from sons. Still I couldn’t picture him as an artist or a writer. I saw him as a big man. As a disciplinarian. As a soldier. On his best days he was a jokester and a story teller and the more I thought about it I realized how fucking similar we were in that regard. We both hid a part of ourselves behind a soldier’s body armor and camo paint and when that didn’t work we retreated behind the smile of a beer drinking buddy. The difference between dad and I is that, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, I couldn’t hide the sappy, insecure, vulnerable side of myself particularly well. It always wanted to leak out. So eventually I gave my words the light that his never got and I believe, I hope, that some of them have blossomed. I know that they’ve improved with the practice. I know I’m proud of most of them. I'm glad to have them read.

And I think I have dad to thank for that. He was always a big man. He was always a disciplinarian and a soldier. He could have easily been a monster. He could have been The Great Santini or worse but he wasn’t. No man is perfect, and Gary Hammett was far from it, but he never mocked or belittled me for putting pen to paper. He read everything I wrote as a child. He attended all my school plays and concerts and cheered loudly. He bought multiple copies of my High School literary magazine and gave them to family. He read my high school paper. He never told me that writing could be a job, or encouraged me to pursue it as a career but I’m not sure he knew that was even an option for guys like us. I think he was proud of my words even then. I think he’d be proud now. I think that he’d appreciate the fact that I’ve finally gotten brave enough to give them light.

So with my mom’s permission I decided to do something for dad and share his words here. I don’t know if they’re “good” but I’m not sure good matters. They're real. There’s decent lines buried in there. If nothing else there’s a unique perspective and an attempt at an original voice. I can’t bring myself to edit them, I’m not sure I could if I wanted to, but the words, his words, deserve to be read.

In honor of today and my dad I’ll leave you with another song about sons, soldiers, and the prices paid. Words I’m not sure I understood fully until I had an old man’s eyes and a child of my own.

To me they look like little boys
I guess they always will
I see them running all around
Never stopping to be still

So who is that young man
Underneath that hospital sheet
His body torn and battered
Inside a drug filled sleep

And who is that other young man
With eyes haunted and so deep
Fighting off the demons
That chase him in his sleep

And who is that old man
Beard and hair all turning gray
Looking back at you from the mirror
As you start another day

Two sons I have been given
They’ve grown to be good men
They’ve paid the price of freedom
For those who just don’t understand

I look into the mirror
See my hair and beard of gray
“Lord protect both my boys
Help them through this crazy day”

“Lord they’re better men than I ever was
They freely paid the price
So that the rest of America
Can sleep safely through the night.”

To me they look like little boys
I guess they always will
I see them running all around
Never stopping to be still.

Thank you for indulging me this. Thank you all for reading.