My Father the Warrior....A Re Post

June, 1950, North Korean soldiers poured across the 38th parallel, the arbitrary dividing line between North and South Korea. By the time they stopped they had smashed through the South Korean capital of Seoul and had the NATO and South Korean troops bottled up at Pusan, in the southern part of South Korea.

In March of 1952, my father, Marty’sHusband Senior, sailed across the Sea of Japan and made his way up the South Korean peninsula to the front lines just north of Seoul. My dad was a forward observer directing fire for the army artillery. His trip to the front took days, the months he spent in the holes, trenches and bunkers must have felt like years.

This is a re post of a blog I wrote in May of 2011.  Since that time my father, the dude to the right here,  has served as President of the National Korean War Veterans Association.  He is about to serve his second term.  I am proud of my Dad and everything he has done for his family.....and his country.  Happy Memorial Day Pops.

At the end of April 2011 I had the privilege of accompanying my father to Austin, Texas so the state senate could recognize and honor veterans, heroes of the Korean War. I stood in the Lt. Governor’s reception hall and ate breakfast with these men, these heroes of a war no one remembers and I was honored to be in their presence and proud that my father was a member of this brave and aging group.

My Dad, like so many soldiers, never really talked much about his experience in the war. I think he was so busy taking care of his family and his job that he didn’t have the time or bandwidth to  What a life changing event the war had been for him. He very successfully managed to compartmentalize his memories until he retired and became involved with his own band of brothers.

After he retired he got involved with the national Korean War Veterans Association and helped found a chapter in Dallas. Through this veteran’s group and the South Korean government he took me to South Korea on a returning veteran’s trip in 1997. It was an amazing and eye-opening trip in so many ways. It was the first time I really understood how impactful this life event had been for him, it was the first time I saw my father as someone other than just my father, it was a chance for me to see him be a part of something larger than my family.

As we toured through South Korea I listened. I listened to my dad as he related to these heroes of a war that has too often been relegated to a somewhat erstwhile conflict instead of the awful, frightening bloody mass of men and women dying and being maimed. They all marveled at how Seoul had recovered and they talked about how this modern city of eight million was nothing but ruble when they had last marched through the city.

I listened as these old soldiers talked and enjoyed each other’s stories and company as they relived a time in their lives that will always separate them from those of us who have been spared the worst of war. I watched as they looked at maps and pointed to where they had been stationed, I marveled at how my own father, a warrior in a real war, looked for familiar spots and I felt pride as I watched him, along with the other veterans, accept an honorary medal from the South Korean army. It was one of those moments that expanded my view and understanding of my own father.

In the Texas Senate gallery I sat with my dad and his compatriots. When the time came for the proclamation recognizing the Korean War veterans several Senators spoke. In turn they each recognized the men surrounding me. Some read names, some spoke of the cold, the heat, the Chinese, the Chosin Reservoir, Pork Chop Hill, and Inchon. Finally they asked for the veterans to stand and finally they applauded, and applauded, and applauded. I felt a great sense of pride as I sat among these very ordinary men who had served their country in an extraordinary way.

As my father and I drove back to Waco from Austin we talked, or rather he talked the whole way home. I asked the questions I’ve always wanted to know and he told me about his journey to war and his time at war and for the first time, his feelings about what he had experienced. I drove up to my house feeling fortunate to have spent this day with this man.

As we drove into the driveway of my home I said I thought it was really nice for the Senate to recognize you guys. My dad said, “Yes, they didn’t have to do that, but it sure is nice.” I’ve always been proud to be his son.

Who to Blame

She didn’t do it.  It wasn’t really her fault, really, I’m serious. 

God didn’t do it.  She didn’t have strokes because God wanted that, really, I can’t believe that.

We have to learn to quit blaming the broken, quit blaming God for the brokenness.  Some things just are.

It’s a pretty natural condition, assigning blame.  I call it natural because it’s what I naturally want to do and I am Joe Average so I know and understand everything.  When Marty had her first stroke I badly wanted to blame someone, I wanted to hold someone accountable, I just couldn’t find the right person.

When Marty had her second stroke I was still looking, looking for someone or something to blame.  It just seemed natural that someone or something did this to her and I wanted to be angry and shout at the person or entity responsible.  I just couldn’t yell at the right person, it would have helped if knew who that was.

There is the crowd that wants to blame this on Marty.  She has to have some accountability and aren’t we all about the accountability.  She was overweight, she smoked, she didn’t exercise and she had a family history.  I thought about blaming her for this whole mess, it made sense and it would be easy because she feels guilty about the burden she has cast upon her family.  She feels like she is to blame so why not just blame her.

The only problem with that theory is that there are lots and lots of people walking around who made a lot worse life style choice than Marty and they have not been afflicted with this disease or any other disease.  I see them every day, I know them, I know their history, I wonder every day why not them instead of Marty.  There is no answer.

Is Marty to blame?  Maybe, partly, I suspect the strokes would have come regardless of her life style choices.  The ruptured aneurysm that almost killed her was congenital.  That’s not her fault.

There’s the fundamentalist religious crowd that wants to blame Marty and her sins.  Their view is this is God’s wrath visited upon an abject sinner.  She made mistakes in God’s eyes; she has to pay God’s fee for the mistakes so God takes those things she most prizes as payment.  I’m not sure I buy this theory of blame either, aren’t we all abject sinners?

Maybe it’s my fault.  If I hadn’t worked so much so far away so much of the time, maybe I could have made a difference somehow.  Maybe it’s my sins we are both paying for now, maybe God smote Marty to teach me a lesson.

Then there’s the whole test your faith Book of Job kind of thing.  If this is a test of my faith, I’m losing, if it’s testing my loyalty, I’m doing okay, if it’s to teach Marty and I a greater lesson, I ain’t seeing the point.

There are those that will say this is part of God’s entire big plan for Marty and me, that everything happens for a reason and some day we will see the reason.  Maybe, I have a hard time with that.  I’m a pretty big believer in free will and I just don’t believe in a God that jacks with you like that. 

I’m sorry to all of you who might be bothered by this view but I don’t think God’s plans included Marty being stricken like this.  I believe we have all been touched by God for our very existence but after that, I frankly think God has a much more Laissze-Faire approach to his creation.  God kicks the rock down the hill and then watches it roll, God lets us live life.

What I believe is… we break…. and to quote Gaga, “We are born this way”.  We are created a miracle, a delicate, finely tuned miracle built with remarkable strength and fragility, we break. 

It’s like the old Mouse Trap game, the game where you built a series of triggers, like balls rolling into a basket, to finally drop the trap on the mouse; if one thing in the chain is missing, if one element is out of place, the trap wouldn’t fall and catch the mouse.  In this miracle of a human body we break if the smallest of things gets out of sync with the rest of our body.  We are breakable, we were created breakable, God doesn’t have to proactively break us, it just happens.

None of this means we can abdicate our responsibility in life that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves and those around us.  I understand the role we play in breaking ourselves and others.  I understand it is natural and human to want to lay blame and fix accountability in an effort to ensure some things never happen again.  

We can’t forget the Newtowns, the Auroras, the Katrinas, the Iraq war, 9/11 and all of the other more minor issues that fall on all of us.  We must learn, that’s part of the process too.  I’m just saying that sometimes we should spend more time dealing and understanding the aftermath of the event than blaming the victims.

The right Reverend Leslie of FPC confessed to God the other day in her sermon she needed to quit trying to figure out why bad things happened, why blackness befell good people.  I agree.  It’s not natural to not wonder, but there are no real answers.  Sometimes stuff just happens.

A Lesson from My Older Sister

One of my basic life philosophies in life is to accept responsibility for myself and how I feel.  I’m a great believer in individual accountability and being responsible for your own stuff, check with my children, it’s a mantra.  To me, you abdicate control when it’s someone else’s fault that you feel bad.

My brother-in-law, my political alter-ego, the best debate in the house, has been sick; he has been in the hospital for multiple days, sick, dog sick, filled with nausea sick, feeling terrible.  My sister, the elder of my siblings, you know, the bossy one, has been camped with him at the hospital each and every day for going on three weeks.  What he is going through is awful, what she is doing is truly God’s work and requires blessings.

The brother-in-law finally recovered to the point he could have surgery to remove his gall bladder which was the evil culprit in this drama.  He is feeling better and starting the slow, one day at a time road to recovery.

I have been back and forth a bit with my sister, texting; the 21^st century way to extend concern and get updates.  A recent text,  “…it’s amazing how much better I feel when her feels better….”.  From my elder, mostly wiser I sister, truer words, etc...

If you live with someone long enough, if you love with someone long enough they become such an integral part of your being you hurt when they hurt, you feel success when they succeed, you feel better when they feel better.  Your worry for them when they are broken is real and their victories are shared victories.

I know this because I worry to the point of obsession when Marty is “off her feed”.  When she laughs, when she smiles, the sun shines for both of us.

Yes, this stands in direct contradiction to one of my life’s philosophies, you must be responsible for you own feelings, so much for basic life philosophies…

It feels like Marty and I have always been hyper-linked in some form or fashion, never more than when she had the strokes, never more than when she lay in a coma, never more than when she was deathly ill, never more than when she was hurting.  

In spite of the years since the strokes, in spite of the months of improved health and well being, in spite of our shared experience at this new normal, it’s still the same.  To ask me how I’m doing, you should ask first how Marty is doing.  

I’m really not the self-sacrificing, self-effacing type, the type of guy who empathizes to the point of paralysis; I’m just not that guy.  I do have empathy; I can sympathize, and then move on with my life.  This is more than empathizing, understanding another’s pain, this is a step up born from a symbiotic relationship Marty and I have developed.

If Marty is feeling bad, if she is off just enough for my prying eyes to notice, if she is a tad bit hinky (southern colloquialism)  if she is sick or on the verge of sick, I’m just as hinky.  The worry, the tension, the anxiety come flooding back and all of the sudden I’m there, too focused, too worried about her.  I’m not sick, just obsessed.

I don’t know how to separate myself; I don’t know how to kick in an objective view of things and not feel worse when she feels bad or feel better when she is feeling good.  Even with all of our experience with this illness, with all of the time and angst spent dealing with health crises I can’t seem to divorce myself from how Marty is doing.  My sense of well being is captive to the life and health of another.

It’s one of the unintended consequences of being a caregiver, or a spouse, or a parent, or one of many things where you love and care unconditionally about someone else.  When you do, you just can’t help but become part of who they are and how they feel.

I am always surprised I find myself so intimately linked to another person.  I’m not sure why it’s so surprising, I’ve been with Marty, supporting her, being supported by her, most of my life, certainly all of my adult life. 

 

It’s so counter-intuitive to one of my mantras, “don’t let someone else dictate how you feel.”

Big talk.  I’m clearly still learning.

Dealing with the Guilt

Guilt. Husband guilt, father guilt, survivor’s guilt, caregiver guilt, it’s pervasive, if not ruling. It’s always there. Guilt too often drives behavior, thoughts, and feelings, its real, its palpable; it’s a part my being with Marty. It’s a part of who I am that I must confront and it can be a part of what I do to others from time to time. After all what are parents if not purveyors of a little bit of guilt.

I know her strokes were not my fault, I know the trauma was beyond my control. It’s incredibly narcissistic and grandiose to think I could have prevented Marty’s strokes, to think if I had somehow made her quit smoking, if I had been more present, been a better husband she somehow would not have gotten sick. It makes no sense to any rational sentient person that I somehow feel guilty about her strokes, but sometimes I do feel that guilt, that ugly emotion, which clearly brings into question my rationalness and sentience.

The first couple of years after Marty had the strokes I felt guilt for almost everything. That little nagging inner voice kept haranguing me with I wasn’t doing a good enough job in caring for her to avert the second stroke, I wasn’t aware enough of illness signs or hygiene processes to catch or prevent the latest life threatening infection, or I wasn’t being attentive enough.

It’s weird to feel guilty for smiling or feeling joy but I did. It’s just plain crazy to feel psychic pain for enjoying a round of golf or a trip to see your children, but for a while every time I smiled; every time I enjoyed myself I felt it tinged with this sense of remorse and guilt. How could I feel anything but grief, sadness and remorse when Marty was lying in bed, broken by strokes?

It happens most often when I am somewhere or doing something I know Marty would have enjoyed. It hits the hardest when I am living our life with our children without her. The day our grandson was born I went to Dallas, alone, promising her I would take her the next day. It was a hurried trip, a quick turnaround trip that required going quickly and on the spur of the moment. I beat myself up the entire way to the hospital, why didn’t I just load her up and go, why didn’t I take the time and the trouble and go the extra step to take her, instead of Marty I took guilt with me in the car.

I know Marty; I know she would never wish the burden of guilt on anyone, she felt it too often in her own life with her own mother. She can’t make it go away, it’s in me and too often I can’t get completely away from feeling that pang. It’s a futile and useless emotion in our life’s situation.

Guilt became something I could use to make me feel as damaged and hurt as Marty. In a strange way I used guilt to punish myself, I used guilt to make me at least as frail and needy as Marty. Guilt, feeling bad about feeling happy was a tool to make the caregiver, me, sick too.

In time, over time, guilt for all things bad in her life and the burden Marty and I put on our families and friend’s lives abated. Understanding I was using guilt as a crutch helped; recognizing I’m not responsible for all bad things helps, knowing I’m not everything to everyone helps, living the life helps, time helps.

It’s still there from time to time, every now and then. It still creeps into my psyche on occasion when I have missed something, when I forget to make an appointment, when we miss a medicine dose, when I let my guard down for just a minute, guilt for all perceived sins past and present breaks past my guard. Eventually you just have to learn that life happens and we simply can’t take responsibility for everything, we can only do our best. It’s all we can do.