I am a fan of a number of the positive forces on Facebook (Positively Positive, Dave's Words of Wisdom, etc...) and this came across my news feed today. I have been on Spring Break all last week and this week. Being a single mom, that means that the noise in my house was with his father and I was surrounded by silence. At first, it was cathartic. I was able to just breathe in the silence and to exhale. That was the first full day but then the next night, when I laid down to go to bed, my mind would not shut down. I picked up Kevin Sites book, The Things They Cannot Say, and started to read.
I read this quote and found myself thinking about this past week of "solitude." The ability to be in solitude, to be in the silence...is something that I take for granted. In my solitude and silence, I am haunted by decisions that I have made in my life. But as a I really start to think about this, it isn't about me at all as to why this quote stuck out to me. It was all the things that I have read in Kevin's book, the student veteran that I was told about that for the third semester in a row within the first three weeks just stopped coming to classes, listening to Julie Vinnedge (Gold Star Mother of LCpl Phillip Vinnedge) tell me about how she was notified of her son's death in Afghanistan and then hearing her tell the story of the 1951 pickup that would become Fallen Hero's Dream Ride. It was being with LCpl James Sperry at a small community college finding out what their challenges were, visiting with a PTSD/TBI Army OEF veteran and his family that had been home for a week and listening to their challenges, and hearing him speak for the first time about what had brought him to this point in his life and the inception of The Fight Continues. At some point, all of these individuals had retreated into solitude, their own solitude. It was a veteran that retreated from the pressures of the civilian world by no longer going to class. It was a Gold Star Mother that stood in front of approximately 150 people, asking them to please not forget her son and the reason that he served, that they had served. Her solitude lays within her memories of her son and the life that they breathe into a 1951 pickup truck. It was a man wearing sunglasses standing in front of that same audience telling of the death of one of his best friends in Iraq and how he acquired that friend's rosary. His solitude lays within himself and his personal quest. Kevin Sites writes "Despite his embittered state, his feelings of being damaged, worthless and guilty for just being alive, he is still able to reach out to me" (121). And I was able to see what Kevin saw; "I see the warrior still, a man whose humanity abides" (121).
But there was the young Marine at the Veterans Appreciation Dinner that was standing and looking at the Fallen Hero's Dream Ride. Know no strangers, I approached a young man that was looking at the truck. I asked if this was the first time that he had seen the truck in person and he nodded. I continued to talk about the truck and the story and the healing that it has had with so many of us that have gravitated to it. He told me that his injury had occurred about the same time frame as LCpl Vinnedge's death. I invited him to sit at my table with James, two friends from the Mid Rivers Vietnam Veterans Association Chapter, and a World War 2 veteran (wearing his purple heart) and his wife. I watched this young man, this young Marine, as Julie spoke and as James spoke. I saw this young warrior go into his own personal solitude. In this solitude, in this silence, what truth was heard? what solutions where found? What I saw was a young man, that when the Star Spangled Banner was sung stood like a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine). What I saw was a young man with a cautious smile and eyes that were like pools of blue water without the glimmer. What I saw was a young man, a young warrior, within a solitude ... a silence that those of us that have never walked in their shoes can ever understand.
It is a solitude, a silence, that so many of our Global War on Terrorism active duty and veterans carry with them. That solitude, that silence, are their wounds. The wounds that society, as a whole, doesn't see, doesn't understand, cannot comprehend. The wounds of the warrior that volunteered to uphold the foundation of our nation. As a society, we must respect the cause of the solitude but at the same time, we need to educate ourselves, our society about the RED FLAG that the solitude is. We are allowing a generation of men and women to slip away from us.
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