I’m thinking so much about my father this weekend. He died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. Although he couldn’t win that battle, until the end of his life, an abiding point of pride was the time he spent as a very young man in the Army during World War II. Whenever he encountered another veteran, he’d say, “I met another old soldier today.”
Before dementia had a name and a power over him, a gathering power, an ominous war against his brain and his body, Dad had been piecing together a personal memoir.
When he shared his writing with my sister and me, the fact that most of the laboriously-typed manuscript focused on his three short years in World War II astonished us. He’d never talked much about the war when we were children.
One day early in his illness, my Dad said: “Sue, go back into my bedroom and fetch the little gold box on my nightstand.” Inside the box, nestled in cotton, was a wafer-thin turquoise enamel medal engraved with an image of the Virgin Mary, also known as Our Lady of Lourdes. I held the exquisite icon close to the lamp between us. My throat ached with tears. I knew he’d gone to the jewelry store downtown to buy the fine silver chain holding the medal, and used up one of his few opportunities for an outing to do so. His wife was also frail, and preferred to drive as little as possible. Dad wasn’t allowed behind the wheel anymore, doctor’s orders.
“What a precious gift, Dad,” I said, lifting my hair and fastening the silver clasp at the back of my neck. I knew the story of this medal, but I asked him to tell me again to prolong the moment, and the gift.
“Write it down so you remember,” he said. I pulled a notebook and a pen from my backpack on the floor. Dad’s eyes drifted out the window as he thought.
“It was a grand day, Sue,” he said. “I’ll never forget how the townspeople surrounded us as we entered St. Brieuc.”
I pictured him in my mind: the youngest in his regiment of engineers, the slightest built, underage, but probably the most enthusiastic–marching into that small village in northwestern France, liberating it from the German occupation on August 6, 1944.
“Write that down,” he emphasized, watching my pen move across the page. “We liberated the town! And all the people surrounded us, and cheered. They were so very glad to see us! I can still see the face of the Frenchwoman who pressed this little medal into my hands.”
According to Fortune magazine (5/15/20), the total number of lives claimed by COVID-19 in the U.S. is already higher than the nearly 68,000 troops who died in every war since the start of the Vietnam conflict. And the number of deaths in New York is closing in on the 36,574 U.S. deaths in the Korean War.
But the war we are fighting now is different—it’s not against dictators and madmen in other countries. The struggle now is against our own mad leader, and ultimately our own pre-COVID lifestyles, marked by excesses in consumption—fossil fuels, meat, forests, and so much more. Will we find the power to liberate ourselves? On this question depends everything.
–This essay is excerpted from I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird: A Daughter’s Memoir available from your favorite independent bookseller or online here on August 1, 2020.
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