My Grandfather did not get the loyalty he showed to the nation returned to him by the VA. Their negligence made his death, albeit likely inevitable, all the more gut wrenching. You see the VA Hospital would not admit a frail, 100 pound man who was once a boxing powerhouse in the Navy. It saved them money for him to die at home of cancer. It put the funeral burden on my grandmother. They did not even offer hospice. He would suffocate with only Tylenol for painkiller. They wouldn’t even prescribe proper pain relief.
Thus, my hero, and a national hero, died a painful death at the age of 63. I understand the dying part. I don’t understand the letting him die in pain part. I will never not be upset about that. You see he served in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He would serve on three ships that were attacked by Japanese pilots. And while 32 years has robbed me of the exact name of the ship, though I think it might have been the USS Belleau Wood, on one of these ships he essentially saw his best friend obliterated.
I do know know he helped save the USS Kadashan Bay, and get her back to port, but that was later.
He saw nearly 100 men lost in a scene from a horror movie, most unrecognizable. It would result in my grandfather, at the age of 19, rising in rank quickly. When I asked him how he did that, he simply said, “I lived.”
But the scenes haunted him throughout his whole life. He never dealt with losing his best friend, because he did not have time to cry. He had to do what he could to keep his ship from sinking and endangering more lives. There could be no tears or shock. Seeing the location of the damage, and knowing his friend’s probable location, he realized one of the bodies floating was likely him. And after things calmed down, and he had put his heart back in his chest, he did confirm that his friend was one of the presumed dead.
He simply deleted the scene from his mind in order to perform his duties as a Sailor. And perform he did. He won various medals, and commendations, and was considered a bona fide war hero. But nobody at home knew that. To him, the medals meant nothing. He would never again have a friend as close to him as that one, and never opened up to outsiders.
His own wife did not know the story of his best friend. Only when in pain and on his death bed, did he finally open up, to me. And these words shall stick in my heart for all time-"He floated out to sea, dead, after being hit by a Japanese plane. He was my best friend."
He thought it was so strange that what stood out in his memory was the taste of his cigarette as the familiar, terrifying sound of a descending plane approached. He lived. His buddy died. He never knew why it had to be him. He never knew why it had to be anybody. He never stopped feeling guilt.
And then sometime before my 20th year of life, it ocurred to me that for a smoke break, a random positon on the deck, my grandfather Myron dies, and with it, all of his family tree. His daughters are never born. His son is never born.
I am never born. So it washed over me, this realization that nearly 100 family trees died that day. Those branches would never extend, they would never bloom, they would sink into the blood red surf of the sea.
So on this Veteran’s Day I would like you to take the time to think about the sacrifices made by those who died, the pain and mental anguish suffered by those who lived, and the cost that was paid to halt evil in its tracks and preserve a free nation.
On this Veteran’s Day I want you to think about the fact that you are here, breathing, and eating, and thinking, and reading this diary. I want you to think about the razor thin margins by which you were allowed to slip through the cosmic cracks to be here.
And then I want you to be grateful. I want you to be grateful for life, for the opportunity to move our nation forward, to fight for the health of our planet and to be a shining light of hope to those in need.
I want you to think about what the lives that never were might have been. I want you to think about the duty the gift of simply being here requires of us. I want you to kiss your wife, or husband, or significant other as the case may be, hug your children, pet your kitties, rub your dog’s head or talk lovingly to your parrot.
I want you to walk outside and breathe fresh air and then I want you to think about one man, with a cigarette, looking up to the sky, escaping death by inches, all so he could soldier on, scarred but unbroken, bloodied but unbowed. And think about this man, my grandfather, that was allowed to live and have a family, and eventually lead to the birth of your pal Claw, who will on this day as I do every day and will do every day going forward, remember both that each day is a gift, and a responsibility.
I was placed here on what might amount to few steps towards safety because a 19 year-old kid, scared and tired, and homesick, lit a cigarette and stood where the wind would blow the smoke away from his face. Somehow, I have to make that good on that opportunity. Somehow, I too, have to be worth it.
Somehow I have to live up to the bravery of that distinguished 19 year-old kid, and do my part to preserve this union for peace and security in all its forms, and justice for all.
Thanks to your love and kindness, I have the chance to do just that. I am grateful to you for that, more than you will ever know.
I will never forget that I was one cigarette away from my grandfather dying that day, and me never being here.
So were many of you.
There is only one conclusion I can draw from that. They say the winds of change are always blowing. But I think,
The wind must have chosen us..
to be the change.
-ROC
In honor of my grandfather..
“Sing to The Foam, Until We Meet Once More.”