The Cost of War

My uncle Tommy died yesterday. While it is sad – it’s sad when anyone dies – it’s not for the reason you think. The truly sad part is that I didn’t really know him very well. I could probably count the number of times I spent with him on two hands, or at least very close to it. Uncle Tommy was one of those Vietnam vets who never made it all the way back from the war. All three of my uncles were in the military during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. I’m not sure if they were drafted or what. Their dad, like most members of his generation, had served during WWII, fighting in the Aleutians and then going to Europe at some point after D-Day, and my grandma was a nurse in DC during the war, so maybe joining the military was just what was expected of them. Tommy was the only one who got sent to Vietnam though. He was a gunner on a helicopter. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I always picture it kind of like the air cavalry scene in Apocalypse Now.

Of course, he physically came back from Vietnam, but he struggled with alcohol and drugs and PTSD for years, and drifted in and out of VA institutions. I remember hearing my mom and my grandma talking about him being all drugged up on Thorazine but not really understanding what it meant. He married a woman who was involved in some weird cult, and had a son who we only ever got to meet once, although my grandma did get to see him a few more times. Tommy lived a pretty tenuous life, renting rooms, spending time homeless. My mom can’t pass any guy who looks like a homeless vet without giving him money, because they always remind her of Tommy. In the last few years he had settled down to a certain extent. He hooked up with a girl my age (yep, a little weird) who seemed to make him happy. He still struggled with alcohol, and was on disability and couldn’t drive, but they had a place in Manchester together and brought each other some stability. He’d be fine for a while, but he’d always fall off the wagon or get belligerent or just be difficult, so no one in my family had much regular contact with him. His health has been poor for a long time though, and the VA medical care was all he ever really had. At some point last year they figured out that he had something like three different kinds of cancer. My mom is convinced that he was exposed to Agent Orange or something bad during his time in Vietnam. They told him he didn’t have long to live. He made it through Christmas, New Year’s and finally the Super Bowl, and then I guess he just ran out of milestones to keep him going. He wasn’t even 60 years old yet.

I went looking for a photo of him to post here. I thought I had at least one because he came to my college graduation, but I don’t seem to have any. He looked a little like Jerry Garcia, only more New England-ish. One of the clearest memories I have of him is from the family graduation dinner, which both he and his twin brother attended, probably because my grandma was paying. It was at this awesome Chinese restaurant outside Boston called Kowloon, which looks kind of like a temple from the outside and has outrigger canoes and tiki bars and palm trees inside. Because we were all smokers at the time, I ended up down at the end of the table with Tommy and Teddy and Teddy’s girlfriend. They all knocked back Mai-Tais and traded jokes, and I tried to fit in with the grownups. My brother and my cousins ran around, and I chatted with my mom and dad and aunt and grandma and got to see what it was like to be part of a big family for once. It was nice. I’m glad I have one nice memory of him.

As I said earlier, what really makes me sad about this is that I never really knew my uncle. He went off to war as a bright, promising young man, and it totally ruined the rest of his sad, too-short life. And that, more than anything, is why I am against the Iraq war. Why are we doing this to more of our young men and women? What are we accomplishing by being there? Iraq hadn’t attacked us. Do I have to point out again that they didn’t have anything to do with 9/11? They didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, and their vaunted army really wasn’t all that much of a threat. It’s all such a stupid, pointless waste of lives and talent, and I don’t want one more person to have to go through what my uncle Tommy did.