Something Broke Inside Me

It happened on the best of days. Bright, sunny and clear...cool, wind at my back and clear sailing through New York State from north to south and back again, Syracuse to Elmira, Belmont and, finally, Rochester. Rochester. Rochester.

It took three and a half months...102 days...to come face to face with the experience I had been expecting from the start...that experience of emotional overload and psychic pain like I'd not experienced, perhaps ever.

It went like this: I had been looking forward to this memorial since I had seen the first photograph of it almost three years ago. Individual markers lining a walkway through a field of green. Seemed like a very peaceful setting and very creative.I knew it would be greater than I had expected as soon as I saw the walkway and the flags, and the large slabs of granite "guarding" the flags. It was impressive.

Got closer and started snapping photos. At the base of the flags I finally saw the markers...280 of them lining a gracefully carved path around and below the flag stand each about waist high, arrow straight, and bent at the top for easy line of sight of the information on each. As I began my walk along the path, occasionally reaching out and touching the markers, I noticed the detail. Felt the presence. saw the things left behind and attached to the markers...A POW-MIA flag on one...a marine corps flag on another...photos of the fallen placed by friend or family. Living proof that this space was visited often and revered by many.

Along the path, my heart got heavier and heavier...this was a more effective way of displaying the wages of war than names on a stone. This was more like a company at attention, palpable and visceral, and horrible. Then it got worse.

At the end of the path is the Garden of Reflection...large slabs of granite with more information about the war and its aftermath, it's cost and its psychic toll than is presented, as a rule, in one place. And THE POEM.

A nurse, called "Dust,y" who served in country, penned the most beautiful, awful, wrenching words imaginable, entitled "Hello David,"and I am thankful I was there to see them:

Hello David, my name is Dusty
I'm your night nurse.
I will stay with you.
I will check your vitals every fifteen minutes.
I will document inevitability.
I will hang more blood
and give you something for the pain.
I Will stay with you and I will touch your face.

Yes, of course I will write your mother
and tell her that you were brave.
I will write your mother
and tell her how much you loved her.
I will write your mother
and tell her to give your bratty kid sister
a big kiss and hug.
What I will not tell her
is that you were wasted.

I will stay with you
and i will hold your hand.
I will stay with you
and watch your life flow through my fingers
into my soul.
I will stay with you
until you stay with me.

Goodbye, David-my name is Dusty.
I am the last person you will see.
I am the last person you will touch.
I am the last person who will love you.
So long, David-my name is Dusty.
David-who will give me something for my pain?

*****************

It was too much. I sat on a rock and cried for nearly an hour. I cried last night reading this to my host. I'm crying again, now, writing this. I will be keeping this close to me for a very long time. I will be incorporating it into any speaking I do, and I will never forget that the cost of war does not end with the final payment of a life, but keeps going on the ledger of life, gathering interest against the soul of all touched by that death.

More about this in my next post. Photos follow below.

See this entry on our new website http://vietnamveteransmemorialtour.org/something-broke-inside-me/

See our photo gallery: http://vietnamveteransmemorialtour.org/photo-gallery/