I could tell you a thousand stories about her.
How we’d sit out on the back patio and drink Pepsi through straws from ice-filled glasses and watch the hummingbirds at her house in Los Gatos.
How back in 1945, she sat parked in her Chevy near the Golden Gate Bridge listening to Doris Day sing “Sentimental Journey” as the ship carrying her husband left for Japan.
I remember her talking about a neighbor she had in Campbell, Calif. She would tell me that he’d sooner climb a telephone pole and tell a lie when he could stand on the ground and tell the truth.
I can remember all of this; but she can’t.
I interviewed her for a journalism class I had in college. I heard about how frustrated her parents were with President Hoover and how the Great Depression affected them. She would tell me about the canneries in Almaden Valley and how she and her mother would dress to go into downtown San Jose to shop.
She told me a thousand times of how her family moved from Wisconsin to California in the 1920s. She told me what a gentle and good-natured man her father was and how sweet and kind her mother was.
Her potato salad will go down in history as quite possibly the best potato salad ever.
My favorite stories were the ones she would tell me about my grandmother, her older sister.
Maybe it’s because she was my grandmother’s sister that made her special to me. I don’t really know. But, through her there was a link to my past – someone who knew my family before I came along. Someone who could look at an old black and white photograph from some obscure family album and make it come to life.
I wish it were that simple now.
I wish I could show her a picture of one of the picnics we went on to Big Basin Park and have her eyes dance again with the light of remembrance and have her tell me all about who was in the photograph.
I wish the box of See’s Candy I left her this weekend would have allowed her to remember how much she loved milk chocolate covered almonds.
I wish so desperately that she would tell me just one more story about anything. It seems an enormous task to think that now I will have to remember for myself and for my son.
It’s like watching fire destroy something you love.
I have a tendency to romance the past, to cast it in sepia tone and blur the edges. I picture my aunt’s life as some fantastic Frank Capra movie with Doris Day singing in the background.
Gonna take a Sentimental Journey,
Gonna set my heart at ease.
Gonna make a Sentimental Journey,
to renew old memories.
My dear brother -
That it’s taken me this long to write this letter is a sin. That I’ve waited until such an obvious date to write it only adds insult to injury. But, in the end this is not about me. It’s about you.
I never said thank you.
Your picture hangs on our wall in the living room. There are two that stand out to me whenever I glance at that wall. There is one of you and dad at the airport waiting for the flight back to California and the other is of you in your uniform taken, as I recall, during basic training in San Diego.
You enlisted when our family was distraught over an impending divorce. There were kids involved – one wasn’t even born yet – and then all the horrible thoughts that go through your mind when contemplating divorce. Naturally, it would have been easy for you to stay and offer whatever help you might have provided but you chose, instead, the more difficult course and honored your word – at some sacrifice, I would guess, to your own peace of mind as to how things would turn out in your absence.
My son was born two years later. I think you were in Okinawa during all the anticipation and planning for his arrival. I missed you terribly. I was never resentful; but I don’t think selfishness on my part was ever completely out of the question. It seemed logical and I understood, but I never truly considered the tremendous sacrifice on your part in accepting your duty.
The 1990s seemed very safe to me. Bosnia always bothered me, and there were the photos from Mogadishu that were alarming, but the U.S. economy was booming, Republicans controlled the legislature and all seemed right in the world.
And then came 2001. The call at 6:45 a.m. The hours in front of the TV wondering what else would happen. The calls back east. The disbelief.
I remember the fear and the reality that our world had changed forever. Mostly, though, I remember the hope I found in our armed services. That despite such a horrific event, I still felt safe on the road and at home at and in the grocery store. And I realized that it was only because of our military that I felt safe at all. I didn’t have to worry about suicide bombers on buses or running into downtown restaurants.
Every year at the capitol, the CSU brass band stands in the gallery, which encircles three-fourths of the House chamber two stories above where I stand, and they play our national anthem, “America the Beautiful,” and “God Bless America.” I simply weep.
It is not only because I love this country so much and can scarcely believe that I have the honor of serving its citizens, it is because I am so very proud that I have a brother who sacrificed so much to allow me the privilege of standing in that room where laws are made.
It is because of you and those who served with you and those who continue to serve that our country peacefully transfers power every four years to a new national leader. I was struck by this on Election Night last year, that despite my skepticism of our new president, we live in an amazing country and at a terrible price. And it is because of men and women like you who have been willing to pay that price, that the U.S. remains the incredible country that it is.
And so, despite how sinfully late this letter is in coming, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you on this Memorial Day 2009 for your sacrifice, for your sense of duty, and for your patience with your fellow Americans who remain dreadfully ignorant to the evils that surround us from which you so selflessly protected us.
Thank you for temporarily putting your life on hold for five years so that our lives could go on without interruption.
Thank you for eating endless MREs so that we could eat whatever we want whenever we want.
Thank you for training in the merciless sun, for running and carrying a ridiculously heavy pack on your back, for ignoring the pain, so that I could figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Thank you for your willingness to give up family gatherings and events, to protect us from those who would if they could take those moments from us forever.
I am so proud of you and love you so much. I will never forget.
Your brother –
I sat in one of those meetings earlier this week. The kind where you not only begin considering how you could kill yourself right there, but begin doodling what the scenario might look like.
Someone in my family was recently commissioned to write assigned the task of writing a sonnet. This is what you might consider my attempt at combining that assignment with my sentiments toward last week’s meeting and the one who called it . . .
My goodness, how you speak and never end;
Your omniscience is compelling indeed.
Is there nothing you can’t do, my vain friend?
It seems you merely speak and then succeed.
You called us all to meet, and now we’re here.
With no agenda, we are captive, save your grace.
Your pratt’ling sans direction, is our fear.
Please make your point and let us leave this place.
How is it that your talent’s so misplac’ed?
Is there one sentence that has not begun with “I . . .”?
Your bravura is unparalleled, yet wasted.
We are wholly unimpressed and think you lie.
This wandering conversation’s become tiring.
You’re a boor and consequently uninspiring!
So the next time you’re sitting in the board room with five or more members of your “team,” listening to some moron drone on ad nauseum et infinitum about his or her accomplishments, you’ll have something to chuckle about while you doodle what your untimely demise might look like.
Cheers!
