Beginning of an End

“It would have been better if I’d have died over there.”

He says it often, usually late at night after a bad day. Though it pains me to even consider it, would it?

I tried to imagine but only came up with the fact that had Chris not made it home, I’d have never met him. For me, that would not have been better, regardless of the bad times.

But what about him? I am only an observer to his nightmare. I’m not stolen away by my own mind and plunged back into the very thing that created so many traumatic memories. I only hold him when he’s barking orders and screaming "Incoming!" Is death easier than years of fighting the war again and again?

My husband began seeing a counselor this week. He will not take this journey alone, and I won’t abandon him when he needs me, so I attended. The first meeting was an orientation to the facility and what it offers. In an over air-conditioned room, we sat across from two Vietnam vets. I watched faces, saw the young men behind the aged eyes. The boys who’d been there and carried back with them the same burden our newest veterans are carrying. Now old grey men, still suffering after all these years.

Would it have been easier for them had they died there? For their estranged children and long gone wives? After death, grief for the family begins. It’s different for so many of us, but it’s a beginning of an end. Estranged children may simply be children who remember a loving father vaguely, the pain a dull ache now. Memorial Day could be a day for loved ones to lay flowers and remember a man who was a hero, not a self-medicating hermit who was angry a lot, paced the house in the middle of the night, and separated himself from the family until everyone he’d ever loved had walked away.

Chris has struggled for the past six years to find the beginning of an end. Not in death, but in re-finding life. False starts, misplaced hope, pills, tests, blah, blah, blah. It’s a barrage of dead-ends, and it’s draining.

When we sat around that conference table, the one Vietnam veteran directly across from me, we listened as he talked about all these years. Chris’ jaw tightened and I watched him shut down. I could see his thoughts across his face.

I’m not doing this for 40 years. I can’t do this for 40 years.

The thought was staggering. Forty years of flashbacks, nightmares, no sleep, paranoia, hyper-vigilance.  No peace. And I wandered back to those words he spoke in the middle of the night some weeks ago.

“It would have been better if I’d have died over there.”

And I wondered. For him, would it have been? Doesn’t that depend on what’s in store? Do we become blind to the good when there is so much bad?

Though I feel guilty for my thoughts, I’m hopeful June 10^th, will become Chris’ new birthday and he will never again say death is better than life.  

The beginning of the end.

The end of flashbacks, the end of nightmares. The end of him dreading bedtime, dreading leaving the house, dreading the mail, dreading the VA.

An end to the fate of dreading life, as an old vet feels sitting across from the newly wounded and still searching for relief from the burden of a long ago war.

May we all find our beginning so that our end is in sight.