"Life"

Vignettes from a life, and afterlife.

Years ago I told the story on the air on radio which was my profession for some decades. The story of a dream. A dream of my brother in the Vietnam war.  I felt a kind of shame I had never served. Everyone I had grown up with did. They went they fought they suffered they came back with wounds seen, and unseen.

I stayed home.

They told me,...all of them in their way that I was well out of it. If they could have they'd have stayed home too. Still my sense of betrayal remained.

Till now till that dream.

In a dream that dream I mentioned I was finally with my brother. With him as I so wanted to be when he was over there. It's a short sequence. Just he, and I out in the open. There was the scream of incoming mortars. My brother John was calmly explaining how to stay alive in a war zone. How to tell if gun fire was coming towards you from a distance or moving away.

Practical matters.

In my longings I wanted to be with John to help him get back alive. Here however he was tutoring 'me' on how to do the same. I loved him for it. He pointed out trip wires for mines. The same hidden in trees just above head height. These to kill over a large area. He said as to how they "...really hated them fuckers."

In particular to this dream those mortars coming down.

Their scream was visceral,...so very very real. John said to me that so long as you can hear them you're okay. If they stop you either die or you don't. On que the screaming stopped.

John said, "...this is how we die."

However there was no explosion no death. The dream morphed as they do to other people other places other times. However at last I had shared my brother's war. Now I knew some small piece of it.

I tell this story because it just happened again.

My brother John came to me again, and again we were in his war. Though this time we didn't speak. We were in a rain forest. I've never been in one, but this I knew was the real deal.

There was a hard rain, but the forest canopy shielded us from it. Drops came down signally. Ricocheting off the tree trunks, and leaves.

We waited.

John didn't speak or look at me, but I knew he knew I was there. We were together in this green cold hot place. John was covered in leaves. He held an M-14, and looked into the foggy distance. Green so green. We sat together quietly on point.

After the dream I realized what it was.

One soldier sits on point, ...guard, while the others rest. John has told me about this. He said as to how sometimes "Charlie" would slip besides some solider on point slit his throat, and just leave him to fuck with the heads of the rest.

On Point.

Waiting.

In the dream I fell asleep. A death sentence if this were really happening. However I just slept, and awoke in my bed in my digs with the ache of those multiple operations still bleeping with me.

Amen.