I didn’t read the prepared script. Consequently, it is not an accurate word-for-word rending of what I shared yesterday, but it is close. I kept the outline handy in case I had a senior moment. I guess you could entitle it "Final Words". It was the last draft of things I hoped to share:
“War does not have a positive face. It seeks to debilitate and to destroy. It forever disrupts a family unit and alters what might have been. It destroys hopes and dreams for the here and now, but it ultimately cannot win.
I’m both humbled and honored by the opportunity to share part of our story. My twin brother and I were born at Major Clinic Hospital in Nocona. That was longer ago than I care to remember. I know the name of the hospital only because Friday evening I was looking for a document and came across my birth certificate.
Holding the birth certificate in my hand, I momentarily thought back to earlier in the day when I had happened across an old family photograph. It was a picture of my two brothers and I. The picture was taken back before we started to elementary school. I had the thought that when we were little we were cute kids. That is true despite the fact that my identical twin told me on more than one occasion during our adolescent age years that I was ugly. Sometimes he even added that I was adopted.
It was all a part of the playful banter that went back and forth between us. We were close. We were also competitive. Folks were always asking: ‘Whose the smartest?’ ‘Whose the toughest?’ ‘Whose the fastest?’ ‘Whose the strongest?’ It was always a tug of war or competition between us. We looked identical, but in many respects we were as different as night and day.
More than once in high school we switched classes just to see if we could without the switch being detected. We obviously weren’t very smart. We never switched classes when Ronnie could have taken a math test for me. I guess turn-about is fair play. I never took an English exam for him. We were very different. Yet, the thing we shared was a bond unlike any other I’ve ever known.
On 27 December 1972, the playful banter between us stopped. The A-6 Intruder aircraft in which Ronnie was flying left the military base in Nam Phong, Thailand for a night mission over North Vietnam. When the aircraft failed to return to the base at the anticipated hour, efforts were made to locate the downed plane but to no avail.
The Marines who delivered the news reminded my parents of our responsibility as a family to maintain hope. The United States Marine Corps would do everything possible to locate and safely return my brother. It was now up to us, his family, to maintain hope. We owed it to our loved one.
What a roller coaster of emotions. My brother and I were only twenty-five years old at the time. How does one inundated with an overwhelming sense of sadness also find the resiliency to be hopeful? Balancing the two extremes became one of the greatest challenges I’ve ever faced.
On a feeling level, initially I felt half dead. It was unmistakable. As a twin, my brother and I shared a special bond. He had always been there. He was part of my identity. People referred to us as twins. We were regarded as a unit. It was as though half of who I am had disappeared.
The sense of loss was debilitating. It was closely akin to someone knocking the breath out of you. You gasp for air and find it difficult to breathe. You know you have to breathe, but breathing represents one painful difficulty after another.
Across four decades, I still remember the uncontrollable anguished crying that I permitted myself the evening I learned that Ronnie was Missing In Action. I say I permitted it. Actually, I’ve never had that kind of control. The flood of tears came involuntarily. Never have I known such anguish and agony.
The tears that flowed out of a sense of intense pain that evening have resurfaced on many occasions since that time. Perhaps at every crossroad or developmental level, I am reminded of my brother’s loss and the missed blessings of his companionship and camaraderie. What I’ve learned through the process is that tears are healthy. They express that which cannot be expressed in any other way.
I am not an expert in the grief process. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned primarily in the classroom of experience. For the past 44 years I have, at times, been painfully aware of the complexity and ill-defined dimensions of ambiguous loss”.
From what I’ve experienced and observed, dealing with ambiguous loss is not a linear process. One of the mistaken assumptions I made looking at the stages of grief identified by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her book entitled “On Death and Dying”, was that the process is linear.
It was simplistic thinking on my part. I’m not dismissing the categories (1) Denial (2) Anger (3) Bargaining (4) Depression & (5) Acceptance. Obviously, they all factor into the process. Truthfully, I cannot affirm or deny that for someone dealing with the diagnosis of a terminal illness, the stages might be linear. I don’t know. What I do know from personal experience and observations of others learning to live with an empty chair, the process is circular and repetitive. It is also developmental. At each stage in the developmental process, people re-experience grief. Anniversaries, family rituals and celebrations, holidays and subsequent losses also impact it.
It is almost like two steps forward, one step back. It is also not a continuous process. Like the chill from a cold north wind, it is both intermittent and recurring.
In 1992, my brother’s daughter, a college student at Texas A&M, received a large envelope of materials from the U.S. Marine Corps. There was no cover letter with the included materials. The envelope simply contained a lengthy document describing a crash site investigation report. The report contained detailed testimony solicited from villagers in a province in North Vietnam concerning a plane crash thought to be associated with my brother. The document contained fairly gruesome details related to decapitation and dismemberment of body parts of one of the pilots who was recovered. Reportedly, a leg was subsequently buried in a villager’s hog pen. There was no explanation provided concerning disposition of the rest of the remains. It was reported that the other pilot perished in the plane.
The report contained fairly diverse testimony related to the time the crash took place. Testimony was as diverse as a ten-year period. In addition, some small pieces of aircraft reportedly were recovered. The recovered pieces did not match the type of aircraft in which my brother was flying.
Trust me, after years of silence and waiting, no one was more interested in knowing the details and circumstances of my bother’s fate than his family. The investigative report my niece received contained so many discrepancies, including reference to airplane parts that were not a match to the plane he flew, that we questioned the credibility of the conclusion.
We responded to the report in writing. We thanked the military for the information and affirmed our willingness and desire to receive any information pertinent to my brother. However, we did highlight the contradictory information and asked on what basis they reached the conclusion that the reported crash site was his? Their subsequent written response indicated they had made a mistake. They too, concluded that the crash site could not have been that of my brothers.
That report was followed by six years of silence. Reportedly at that time, another crash site investigation team revisited the same province and concluded the crash site had to be that of my brother.
In looking back over the four decades since the loss of my brother, I can truthfully say that at no point have I been a stranger to God’s grace. Across the last four decades, I have experienced and re-experienced every possible range of emotion. Through it all, I’ve never experienced it in isolation.
Subsequently, I have discovered what a treasured gift memory becomes. Somehow, with the passing of time, memories become more precious and less painful. Memory serves as a catalyst prompting a spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving for the times shared. How wonderful it is to remember the joy of my brother’s presence and the gift of love that memory supplies.
I’d like to close with a poem written by Rebecca Barlow Jordon. She is an award winning author and friend. Her poem is entitled: ‘A Tribute For Memorial Day – And Freedom:
The young, the old, the timid, the bold.
They gave and they fought
Without thought of themselves, just others.
Some died. Others lived.
Some lost. Others gained.
Freedom
And the tears are for them, but for us as well.
Their stories live on, too many to tell.
But the ones who remain still sing the refrain
While memories dance in their heads,
Of a song deep inside for the ones who have died,
As they live each day with the pain.
And the tune passed down through the ages of time
Whispers loud in the hearts of mankind.
“Freedom”
We remember the cost and all that’s been lost
but we keep on singing their song.
Gratitude wells, and thanks belong
to all those who played a part.
For the badges of valor, both great and small
Are not measured by deed, but the size of the heart.
Their courage and faith, pressed on through prayers,
Offered by those left behind,
Will not be forgotten, their song will live on
In hearts that will never resign.
Sing it loud; sing it often, and never forget
the price that was given for you.
Freedom’”
All My Best!
Don