WHEN MARLEY COMES MARCHING HOME AGAIN
There are times when I think that some things are placed in the “24 Hours a Day Book” intentionally. Of course they are, but by intentionally I believe that maybe they have the date specifically in mind say, on Christmas, New Years, maybe Easter and perhaps in this instance Memorial Day. And it may have been a completely subconscious thought on the part of the author of the prayer and meditation for today in the “24 Hours a Day Book” that stressed the 12th step in this day before Memorial Day ( i.e. helping other alcoholics who have not found their way to sobriety and into the rooms of AA. And more generally, to help other people in need out.)
Or maybe it is I who have changed on this Memorial Day and finally I am sober enough to realize that change; and today I shared that recognition in the room. And I began, “I am of a certain age that I did not appreciate Memorial Day in years past and when my daughter would pester me to see the Norwalk parade, I would, in my drunken mind, be very put out, not wanting to celebrate a holiday for which I had no simpatico. I hated war, and in particular, I hated the most recent wars which many of the marchers were representing. And I completely lost the understanding at the time, that because I hated a principle, that I should not despise the people who, for whatever reasons, were called upon to be the instruments of policies which they may not have been free to resist implementing or had not thought enough about resisting.
“But since becoming sober, I have become self-shamed into realizing that the instruments of policy are not the enemy, and are often the victims of forces way beyond their control; and often enough suffer and are vilified as instruments of policy they had no say in and were not in control of. They were maimed, physically, mentally and spiritually and for their efforts were ill supported by the government that sent them to war and the society that was not prepared to bring them home. (In this I was referring to the Viet Nam War). But in this most modern adventure I am equally chagrinned to find that although we have trained and supplied our troops magnificently to go out and die, we were still ill prepared to welcome them home with the same vigor with which we sent them off to war. We were still ill prepared to bring them home to a safe and nurturing environment that would not only return them welcomed to society, but would ease them back into a society that was not trained to accept and understand what people are like when they come back from war. And in a country of three hundred plus million people, when you return more than a million citizens who have been to war and who have been cooked in its cauldron, the best we know how to do is say ‘thanks for your service’ without understanding how to sit them down and ask the simple question ‘how was it there for you?’
“And as a sober man now, I know that I look at this holiday with great awe and respect for the true sacrifice that people who have been to war have made. Nobody who has been to war is ever the same. And I have finally realized that my antipathy toward this holiday and to other holidays with less “holy” overtones is one that is riddled with guilt, a sort of survivor’s guilt for having the political awareness, the temerity, the opportunity and the luck to resist the Viet Nam War and in doing so, survive it where so many did not.”
And that was a confession I had not known I was going to make when I walked into the room this morning. And I thought, “Wow, now that was TMI (too much information)!”
But apparently it was not, because it sparked a lively discussion of what many of the older men in the room needed to unburden themselves of on this day. The few who were of “a certain age” seemed eager to speak about their deferments and why they “resisted” the war but also how previous wars’ experiences had ill treated the men in their families and led them to turn to drink after their wars, to fight their “shell shock” (PTSD) from after WWII or the Korean Conflict. And how these were dirty little secrets that Tom Brokaw did not heavily advertise about his “Greatest Generation”, (as perhaps he should not have), not that we should be ashamed of those people. No doubt more soldiers than we know of suffered the devastating effects of PTSD from those wars.
Some prefaced their guilt by stating that they “married into” the war trauma as one widow stated about her husband who died of the effects of agent orange. And another who’s cousin came back from Afghanistan “different”, all because he signed up to get a college education, never ever thinking that he would have to actually go to war.
And another of us “of a certain age” had to preface his demurring circumstances by a family recitation of war heroes going back to the First World War in order to prove his family bone fides before “outing” his own behavior of having avoided the draft during his drugging years. And today he is one of the fiercest most patriotic citizens I know. Nobody doubts him and I would not hesitate to say that anyone should doubt me.
Now or ever.
But then there is the issue of personal guilt, not patriotism. We can be equally patriotic marching to the beat of uniformity or by resisting wrong-headedness. But our consciences must be our guides as well. And mine does not regret the political stands that I took, but that I did not understand the difference between political action and kindness, generosity and goodness, led me to pompous self righteousness. And that left too many people out of the support loop, forgotten, uncared for and lost.
And that left them almost “unforgiven” and wondering just what they were “unforgiven” for. They did nothing but follow orders in the noblest sense of the word and they had nothing for which to be forgiven.
Being a drunk does not excuse anything. And becoming sober requires that you acquire sober thinking . And had I not finally awakened to this, I would have been the victim of Marley’s wrath just as surely as had I been an unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge.
© res 5/29/2011
No comments:
Post a Comment