December 17th, 2024
A week ago, our friend, Rob, hosted a Christmas party at his home. We’ve known him for at least twenty years, and he has a get together every holiday season. My wife and I are comfortable with Rob. We know each other’s idiosyncrasies. However, we don’t know hardly any of his other party guests. Since we became Asher’s legal guardians and fulltime caregivers, Karin and I don’t get out much, and when we do, Asher is with us. It’s hard to socialize while watching over a four-year-old with unlimited energy. When we actually go to some kind of gathering, it usually feels awkward. It did last night.
I have a number of interests, but very few of them qualify as festive. So, it’s difficult for me to find appropriate topics of conversation for a Christmas party. My mind tends to settle into well-worn grooves, and even when I start by discussing relatively innocuous subjects, I wind up speaking about heavier things, like veteran’s issues. That doesn’t always play well.
The party guests made up a diverse group with the common denominator being that every one of them had some kind of connection with Germany. Rob has a deep interest in German history and culture, and the other people in his home also had that to some degree. My wife is from Germany, and I lived there for three years courtesy of the U.S. Army. The intensity of our feelings toward Deutschland have diminished over the years. We aren’t passionate about it. The German heritage is mostly background noise in lives at this point.
For a while, I sat at a table with a couple I did not know. Even now, after talking with them, I still don’t know them. They were the kind of people who are reserved and willing to absorb information from others, but don’t reveal much about themselves. By default, I talked about myself, perhaps too much. They asked me what I do, besides caring for Asher. I told them that I write for a veteran’s publication (this one), and that I tell stories (like I am doing now).
I talked a lot about our oldest son, Hans, who was deployed to Iraq with his Army unit back in 2011. I mentioned how hard it has been, even after all these years, for him to assimilate into the general population. I made the comment that Hans despises it when some random person shakes his hand and thanks him for his service. His attitude is basically, “Fuck you. You don’t know what I did, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He doesn’t mind if the greeting comes from somebody with a clue, but most people don’t have one when it comes to veterans.
The female member of the couple told me that Americans are treating veterans better now than they did during Vietnam. I disagreed. The public might not be calling the vets baby killers, but they still don’t give a damn about them. Helping a vet requires more than slapping a bumper sticker on your car that says, “Support the troops!” Giving a veteran a job would be more meaningful.
The male partner lost it at this point. He said,
“You’re telling us that everything we are doing is wrong. What if we can’t give them a job? What are we supposed to do? I’ve worked with these guys. They are angry at everybody. I don’t need that.”
Then he raised his voice and said, “It’s your trauma! You have to handle it! It’s not my problem!”
I couldn’t tell if he was directing his words at me, or at another angry bastard who exists in his memory.
Visibly upset, he asked me, “So, is there an answer?”
I was silent for a while. I replied quietly, “No. There isn’t an answer.”
Asher demanded my attention at that point. I went over to him. He was getting tired and wanted to go back home. My head swirled with thoughts, none of which I could verbalize at the time.
I remembered Dave, a guy I worked with for a long time. He was a Vietnam vet. He’d been in combat. He was a big man, often loud and obnoxious. He was easily offended. I had a short fuse. He and I butt heads frequently. It was like that for over twenty years. Then Hans got deployed to Iraq.
Overnight, our relationship changed. Every morning, when he came into work, Dave would yell to me,
“Frank, how is your boy doing?!”
We would talk about Hans. I would tell Dave what I knew. Dave would admonish me to be proud of Hans. I was proud of him. I still am.
Dave and I got along okay. We never became close friends, but we had mutual respect. Suddenly, we understood each other.
I remembered how, before Covid, I used to go to the local VA hospital once a week to hang out with the patients in the psych ward. I would listen to their stories. They would listen to mine. We understood each other and felt like comrades.
The guy at the party asked me if there was an answer. After thinking about it, I believe there is, but it’s not an easy answer. We live in a society where a person can look at a veteran and simultaneously consider that individual to be both a hero and a damn nuisance. It’s extremely difficult for a member of the general population to see a vet simply as another human being with all the struggles that everyone else has. The vet has to be able to trust a non-veteran enough to tell his or her story. That’s hard. The civilian has to be willing to put up the veteran’s anger and pain long enough to listen to the soldier. That’s hard too.
I can’t think of another way.
Just before we left the party, I went over to the guy whom I had upset. I told him, “I apologize for offending you.”
He made no response.
Frank is Emptiness 