Band of Brothers

Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand. ~George MacDonald

One of my recurring dreams since childhood is discovering that my house has rooms or entire floors that I never knew were there. "How could I have not realized this was here?!" was my thought as  I explored rooms that were light-filled, rimmed with shelves books and other exciting objects. I would awake to disappointment that my house really didn't have a third-story library or a fantastic view out the back window. I would mourn the loss of what would never be and I was left feeling that there were things in this world that were at once near but forever unknowable.

Recently, I realized that this dream is perhaps connected to the fact that there are immediate family members of mine whom I have never met. My mother's brother Charlie was killed in the Vietnam War when he was only 23, fresh out of the ROTC program at the University of Tennessee. I knew his life and death played a huge roll in my mother's life growing up and still does to this day. I would cry when she cried, even though I never knew him. By all accounts he was intelligent, funny, and the ideal big brother, ten years older than my mom. He was engaged to be married to a woman who would eventually become a mother to children unrelated to me. An uncle lost forever; an aunt who never was.

Last week, three of Charlie's fellow soldiers in the 3/4 Calvary came to the tiny cemetery in Warrensburg, Tennessee, to honor Charlie's service and the unfathomable bond that soldiers form, even if it is for just a few days or weeks. My mom had to resurrect a lot of painful memories and experiences, but overall the experience was good. Not easy. Not pleasant. But good in the end. I haven't begun the process of learning what my mom learned over those few days, but I hope to soon. I want to know how Charlie reconciled his kind nature with his call of duty as a soldier. I want to know in what ways she was like her brother, and maybe even how my sister and I are like him, too. I want to know the stories that have never been told.

Anyone who has lost a loved one has to reconcile the gap between what is left and what could have been. When it was someone who was never known, the threads of memory and imagination are even more tangled. We do not have memories of our own, only photos and the words of others. If it is a child gone too soon, we are left to fill in the details of an unlived life.  Reading the letter my grandfather wrote to his fellow soldiers pleading for any information about what had happened after his child's death was, to me, the most heartbreaking thing I have ever read simply because it was my own family. It was too real and too close.

There are no words. There will never be words. There is only silence and the tiny memorials we make on earth or in our hearts to the thought of what might have been. Our loved ones are ever so far away in the palm of our hand.

Three quarters left on Charlie's grave by the three servicemen who were with him when he died.