Talk Cancer

Question:

I just read your Jan 1 post – I am glad you made it through an anniversary day – they are the worst – I can only say this because we live through them each November and December with husband/dad and yes, Tet was on a horror that dwarfed everything else. It doesn’t matter what you did or said for that faceless here – what matters is   that you were there for him and he knew it. No matter  where he is, he remembers. Kathy

Response:

     My name is Bob and I stumbled on to this group about three weeks ago, as some of you might have already figured out from a few ‘triggered’ outbursts on my part. For which I am only partially sorry. Rage and numbness is the component on my trauma’s that have ‘worked’ for me for thirty years.     As  a nineteen year old combatant of the Vietnam war, the slide into nightmare was imperceptibly gradual first. Then as the war  became really hot in late 67- early 68, the old ways I was dealing with the trauma around me stopped working. I began to disassociate and numb out, i didn’t see that, i didn’t hear that, i didn’t feel it. The fear which was always manageable became  nearly uncontrollable terror after more than a few horrific events, a definite minus in the survival game. Subsequently, the fear of that terror occurring again, grew geometrically and acted like a virulent cancer eating me from the inside out. I never talked to anyone about it, but the felt shame and worthlessness dogged me like my nightly bad dreams. I stopped writing home, my girlfriend sent me a ‘Dear John’ letter,  I extended my tour……fuck it. Tet-68 brought death and horror on a scale that dwarfed the everything else………. I was wounded, but survived miraculously. I was luckier than most. ….     My most vivid memory  of the surgical hospital was not of the man across for me, gut shot, and screaming for his mother every night. But rather a badly wounded soldier covered from head to foot with white gauze bandages. I  heard a muffled noise coming from his direction one night as I was shuffling  on by. So I went over to the human mummy and put my ear next to the hole that I assumed to be his mouth. He gasped in the faintest whisper, that had been without water for days and his lips were split and bleeding. I finally understood that he wanted me to take a cotton ball, dip it in water, and dab on his cracked and raw lips. I don’t remember how much time I spent with him that night. I don’t remember what I said to him. I don’t know if he even survived. I think of that faceless hero often, especially on anniversary dates (like today).     I started out this tome by wanting  to tell you all that I did not need or want your support or sympathy (rage), I guess that’s only partially true……..you see, my rage is really my buried grief…….I needed to tell you about my faceless hero, even though it still hurts. It’s 5am I feel a little better now, Thanks for listening. I pray he knows I think of him often….. Bob

Response: