Gene, We Hardly Knew Ya

Memorial Day. Hallmark holiday #6 for the year if you count Patriot's Day. Negotiating traffic through a parade route in Cambridge on my way to the beach, I accidentally drove past your old address on Concord Avenue. Of course, the rickety old piss-yellow three decker you shared with a couple of other Vietnam Vets burned down about twenty years ago, but no matter.

It's been twelve years since you shot yourself in the head at Marblehead Light with your marine service revolver. I still think of you almost every day. And I wonder, like the rest of us who knew and cared about you, what exactly made you give up the good fight. We made sure the marines gave you a military funeral because, even though you were convinced you deserved no honors, those who were soldiers with you, as well as your civilian friends, knew that you did.

You once told me that you performed acts of obscenity in 'Nam. I did not believe you and you angrily pulled out a battered old photo of you and a couple of buddies standing around, armed to the teeth, festooned with scalp necklaces of people you had killed. You pointed to one and exclaimed, "This was a four year old girl. If that isn't obscene, I don't know what is!" I was shocked into a silence unusual for a 26 year old alleged woman of the world.

But Gene, you gave me/us a lot. You taught your friends the wondrous art of skinny dipping in the Fresh Pond Reservoir at 2 AM. You taught me how to shoot that marine service revolver at a target of the boss you hated in the Concord Avenue back yard. You were loyal to a fault. When my marriage broke up, you appeared unannounced in Philadelphia with a U-Haul and moved me home to Boston without judgement.

Sadly, none of us, including you could heal your pain. None of the girls you loved, loved you back enough to commit to fighting your demons. The job you had as a therapist laid you off and you could not find another. Nowadays, we call it PTSD of returning vets and it is worth a Dateline-like special once a week. Back then, you took your silent place among soldiers who came back from the unspeakable, drank heavily, and finally started building arsenals in their houses to either do damage to themselves or others.

Was it the silence that killed you? The guilt over what you had seen and done? The lack of respect returning soldiers suffered back then? Or just the fact that the World was not like 'Nam and the bottom line was that you did not fit in either place anymore?

We, your friends and your family still miss you, Gene. The truth is that you showed each of us a small part of you. Even if we put it all together, we would still end up with a fragmented Picasso-like mosaic.

Gene, it's Memorial Day. I write this in your memory and hope in death you've found the peace you never knew in life.

And like many soldiers who come back to the World each day from today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gene, we hardly knew ya.