Empty chairs at empty tables...

Linda was one of the prettiest girls I ever knew, tall and slim, wavy dark hair, skin that tanned easily in the sun, and a body that made men turn their heads and look again. She grew up in Florida during the late 60's, in a modest home outside of Miami. Right after graduation her high school boyfriend came home from boot camp, all buff and handsome in his uniform and he was soon to be off to war. How could she say no when he asked her to marry him? When he was deployed to Germany she flew for the first time on an airplane, far across the ocean, into a foreign land. Her memories of the picture book city were less fairy tale than nightmare. Shopping with other wives she was taunted and spit on by the locals who did not care for the influx of Americans. The high school hero she married came home most days in a nasty mood and drank his way into a worse one. After a few months she regretted her haste, filed for divorce, and moved a few doors down to live with another wife whose husband had just left for Nam.  That's when she met the boy whose name was Ricky to his siblings and O'mar to his mates, but whom she always called "Blazer". 

He was a poor country boy from one of the many redneck regions of Virginia, the oldest of 7 children his mom bore to her second husband. He had some vague plans for college after he got out of high school, but with no money and no support from his family he quickly fell into the cannon fodder factory of our generation's dirty little war. I don't remember her telling me how they met, only that the two of them were tossed together by circumstance, destiny perhaps, and they clung to each other passionately. In the few months they had together they made a lifetime of plans. She could not stay in Germany once she divorced and he was to be deployed to VietNam. She went home to her family to dream of a Christmas wedding in Hawaii during his R and R.

Linda's divorce from her first husband coincided with mine, and as fate would have it I had taken in Ricky's   older sister who had been living from hand to mouth in a tiny room around the corner from my apartment. Her childhood as the outsider in her family had left her with terrible scars, some visible, some not. Her mother did not seem to even try to protect the child of her first marriage from the mental and physical abuse of a step father whose hatred for her was never disguised.  In the habit I have of collecting lost puppies, my heart went out to her. I was struggling with raising a child, finding work, school, and getting back into the dating scene. I had an extra room so I asked her to move in with me and watch my little one in exchange for rent. My son took to her right away and she came with a wealth of child rearing experience.

Meanwhile Linda sent passionate letters to her Blazer, all filled with stories about tomorrow and forever. He wrote back, telling her loving lies, not dwelling for a second on the horrors around him or his occasional use of the drugs that let him sleep at night.  I've seen the pictures of the wedding, her in a simple blue dress holding a bouquet, him in jeans and a knit shirt, all smiles and hugs. Friends gathered around them and one snaps a picture of her sitting in his lap, arms hooked together, each sipping champagne from the other's glass. She did not tell me the first time she showed me the pictures, but the wedding was not legal. When I knew her better she confessed. Thwarted by the army bureaucracy the vows they made were only in their hearts, but with the agreement that in six months they would do it again in front of the preacher.

Of course they knew he was in the business of death, but no 19 year old imagines it will really be them. Most of the infantry in that jungle hell filled with snakes, spiders, booby traps, heat, humidity, filth, and torrents of rain had no idea what they were up against, or even how to tell friend from foe. Many sought escape in the fog of drugs and so it was for Ricky when he came back from R and R. I would like to say that his passing meant something, changed something, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sometime in the early hours of a steamy hot January morning he asphyxiated on his own vomit after self medicating on drugs and alcohol. There is a cause of death listed graciously on the record. 

His tour began on Jun 29, 1970

Casualty was on Jan 23, 1971

In QUANG TIN, SOUTH VIETNAM

NON-HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY

ACCIDENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION

Body was recovered

The box with his body was interred near his home in the Episcopal Churchyard. When the flag was folded and handed to his mother she held it only for a moment before passing it to the crying girl beside her.

 It was barely spring when I met Linda for the first time. She had turned 19 in February, right around the time of the funeral. She was not yet one year out of high school but had been married, divorced, engaged and symbolically widowed in that short space of time. Since the funeral she had been unable to leave the protection of Ricky's home, the grieving siblings, his parents that she thought would be her own. My housemate had talked her into coming to Richmond, accompanied by Ricky's brother, whose love for his dead brother's girl was palatable to everyone but Linda. We were best friends before the weekend was over and I pulled her aside to ask her what her plans were for the future. I could see by her face that she had none. I told her my lease would be up in a few weeks and I wanted to look for a larger place. I asked if she would like to come to Richmond to live. She leaped at the chance to start a new life. 

 We had two frantic years together before she and I were ready to move beyond our pain. We sometimes cried, but more often we laughed, and lived, and somehow together found healing for our strangely similar wounds. I made her a real wedding dress for her very real wedding in the summer of 73. Before she left she asked me if I would keep the box with Ricky's pictures, a few mementos of his short life, and the flag that had draped his coffin. They sat in my blanket chest for many years until she was secure enough to ask for them back one day. We sat down with a pot of coffee and I let her tell it to me all from the beginning to the end. I somehow felt I knew her Blazer personally after that, and his death never seemed like a statistic to me. That weekend we went to DC and for the first time she traced his name with her fingers on that cold black wall. We read off the names of the others beside him and knew that for each lost soldier there was a story that only the men that lived them would ever know. I pulled up the wall website this week and found that there are words written there by friends that served with him. One of them reads:

He was known to us as O'mar. He was one of my closest friends. When I got on that chopper to go home in Dec. of 1970, He went also to go on R&R to Hawaii. Thats the last time I saw O'mar. When I got home I received a letter from him telling me what a good time he had and how much he enjoyed seeing his family and girlfriend. I went on to my next duty at FT. Hood Texas. I wrote him a letter when I got there. The Army answered my letter to inform that he had he had died.All I have left are all the good times we had,a few photos and the memories of a friend who watched my back while I was watching his. He was a very special friend.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

I'm not sure why I picked this labor day to wax nostalgic about a life cut short, any more than I understand how I got involved in that particular drama so many years ago. I only know that survivors must tell the stories. Perhaps you have one that needs to be told too...