I've wanted to write this diary for a number of weeks, I just could not put together my thoughts on the subject.
A few weeks ago, I made a late night supermarket run on a Saturday. Normally I shop late and on a weekday, it's more convenient, but for some reason, maybe divine intervention from the "intelligent designer" made it so, but that Saturday night I needed groceries.
McLean, a little town in Fairfax County, VA is one of those places where everyone knows you. All the Safeway people have known me for years, but one of the cashiers this Saturday night stood out. I could see from the parking lot, his 6'7" skinny frame, crooked over the cash register. "Oh shit! Robert! Man, I hope he's alright" I thought at the time.
Robert and I went to high school together, he was a year younger than I was, but we had a few friends in common, and he knew he could count on me for a ride home. All I really remember about Robert from high school though is how unhappy his mother was, and how she tried to ruin Robert's life on a daily basis. By the time I was finishing up my first year of college, Robert was working at Safeway part time, and had enlisted in the National Guard. His family was a regular Great Falls family, with a million dollar home and two six figure incomes, but for some reason, his mom decided that she wouldn't help Robert pay for college, he was on his own. She waited until the last week of school, after Robert had sent in his acceptance letter at a school; I am not sure which one.
Robert wasn't a dumb kid, and he wanted to get a degree, so the National Guard, especially under Clinton, was a great possibility. The years came and went, and Robert was studying part-time at George Washington, and then 9-11. Robert didn't get sent away at first, he did a few rotations around the country. But by 2004 his number was up, they were sending Robert's unit to Afghanistan. I was working for a non-profit in Richmond at the time, so I had lost touch with Robert. But a few weeks ago, one
Saturday night, I found Robert 5 days home, hunched over a cash register at 11pm.
I started laying my items on his register's belt, and smiled, "When'd you get home." My eyes were instantly drawn to his. They were dark, black rings surrounding them. He was skinnier, and leaner than when he had left, with a deep scar above his eye, it made him look tired. His skin had a grey tint to it, and his hair had a short military crop. "5 days ago man!" he replied. "Where'd the send you?" "Afghanistan."
Robert finished checking out the gentleman before me, and I straddled up, giving him a firm handshake, again my focus turned to his eyes. He instantly thought I was looking at his scar, I wasn't. "I got shot above the eye man, just a scar." "Oh...I'm glad your home man....glad you're safe." "Yeah, thanks, its good to be back" I was struck by how empty he looked, how beaten and dried of spirit. "Man, you wouldn't believe what I saw over there. Its incredible, its terrible, some of them are living in little mud huts...its sad, its just...fuck." I thought about Robert's mom, and how little she let him know that he was important. I played a scene in my head, where she was overjoyed that he was home, alive, with just a scar instead of a hole. But then reality kicked in, I swiped my card, and entered my pin. Again I was staring at his eyes and his face, I was taken in, like driving by an accident on a highway, I HAD to look. "I'm just really glad your back Robert, you know in one piece" "Yeah man, we should hang out" he replied flatly. He was a train wreck I thought, I could see in him all the carnage of an accident. Robert was dead!
All night I thought about how I saw a friend, a dead man walking. It broke my spirit to know that Robert had gone from a kid, with me in a wealthy Washington D.C. suburb, and died. Robert wasn't able to grow up, he wasn't able to become a man, he was sent to a foreign country to die, and his body came back with a heart beat.
Here's to Robert, and all the men and women like him! Here's to those who are injured just doing their job! Here's to those who just wanted an education, to those who wanted to get out and see the world, to those that wanted something better. Here is to those and their families, that made it home in a dark box with our flag providing long needed body armor. Here is to those that made it back in body, but are broken in spirit. And here is to those not yet old enough to understand what has happened in America, and here is to hoping they will never have to learn it first hand!