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It’s hard to find needles for the turntable nowadays, but the young orderly at the VA helped. He wrote down a link and I followed it, and I placed the order. I worried that it wouldn’t arrive in time.
The sun shines with obscene glee through the blinds as I start the old vinyl. Joan Baez fills the air just as she has for so many of our decades together that they’re not worth counting any more.
I bring your hand to my lips and your eyes flutter open. For Joan or for me, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, but I remember a time when it did. You used to tease me about my jealousy and I used to deny it. We were silly in love.
“Is it over?” you ask.
“Yes, babe. It’s over.”
The thin pastel of the hospital blanket rises and falls with your sigh. “I can’t see you.”
I gently move aside the tubes and lines that separate us, and I lie on the bed with you, like we lay for so many years when we were nude and young and on fire.
A small group in mint green has gathered in the doorway. “He’s going,” someone whispers, but I already know that. You’ve been going for years.
Your hand – the one that isn’t infested with needles — reaches up and strokes my face. “Did we hold the Mekong?”
“Yes, love.”
“And Saigon?”
Saigon fell, of course.
“Saigon held.” I take comfort in the suck-hiss respiration of the machine beside us that pretends you’re still breathing.
On your last real exhale, on the outgoing tide that takes what remains of you from me — the pieces they sent home forty years ago — you ask, “The war…?”
“It’s over.”
“Can I sleep now?”
I hold your head and remember how I loved your gleaming blond curls. “Yes, my love.”
Even the machines can’t delude me into believing that it’s your heartbeat I feel.
Deborah Winter-Blood is a writer, dog mom and displaced California Valley Girl. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications over the past 30 years.
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31 Responses to “VETERANS OF WAR • by Deborah Winter-Blood”
Comments
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March 2nd, 2011 at 2:37 am
When will they ever learn?
March 2nd, 2011 at 4:43 am
This writing shows so much can be said with so few words.
Precise and moving.
Thank you, Ms. Deborah Winter-Blood.
M. Sue
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:02 am
Its hard to say anything critical or even analytical about something so touchingly expressed. 4 stars, bitch! LOL!
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:23 am
Wow… Isn’t it ironic that this publishes on a day I am riding to the VA hospital for an appointment.
This remarkable glimpse into the fading life of an American veteran on the brink of death, poignantly told through the eyes of his wife, is beautifully written.
What I like about this is the parts of their story that aren’t told, their years together since the war are a mystery and it makes me want to know more about them. What were his wounds, mental and physical? (That’s also the bad thing about this story… I want to know and can’t)
Thank you for the morning tears in my coffee. Brilliant!
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:34 am
As a Viet Nam era vet, stories like this always strike a chord. This one, simple in it’s telling, complex in it’s message, really hits home.
It was an ugly war for the troops. So many people at home didn’t even want to acknowledge you if they saw you in uniform. When you traveled by commercial air for leave, you had to wear your uniform to get the military rates…but it almost wasn’t worth if for the “looks” you got.
We were just trying to do our job, and it seemed, the country didn’t care. Glad to see that’s changed. Five stars….
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:54 am
Beautifully warm and touching
March 2nd, 2011 at 8:07 am
Wonderful, and full of tears of remembrance, Debi. Wish you’d mentioned Baez was singing “Farewell, Angelina.” Offline, let me send you a story I’m working on about disappeaaring photograph needles.
March 2nd, 2011 at 8:07 am
Deb, the attempt is appreciated, but it fails the details test. It would have been better to concentrate on the emotion and not to mention specifics. The Mekong is a vast river system which, in Vietnam, was simply referred to as ‘the Delta’. I spent a year in and around the Delta. No veteran would ask if we ‘held the Delta’. It makes no sense.
Holding Saigon is a non-issue. We weren’t there in the military sense when it fell. Every Vietnam vet knows that. I’ll grant you that a dying man might get confused, but, again, there was no need for something this specific.
On my deathbed I think I’ll remember things like the sound of rotor blades, the smell of jungle and paddy, the men who were with me. The body bags. Or, as I once wrote in a poem, ‘gun metal steaming in rain’.
Jim
March 2nd, 2011 at 8:30 am
it might be impossible for any one who wasn’t in Vietnam
to know what it will mean to them on their death-bed, but
what this story powerfully shows is what it meant for all
those who realized the war is never over for veterans as
long as they can remember it. It may be that this man has
already escaped it in mind before his final dying. The war
in Vietnam never ended for my brother. He once told me,
as this story does: “You know when all that suffering will
no longer be in vain ? When people learn from it not to
send more to war.”
March 2nd, 2011 at 8:44 am
Powerful emotion, succinctly conveyed. Another fine job, Debi.
March 2nd, 2011 at 8:51 am
Definitly a five star story. You captured this beautiful scene so simply and with very few words. I loved the way the music of Joan Baez added to the scene, but in the intrest of full disclosure she’s one pf my favourite musicans.
March 2nd, 2011 at 9:32 am
Wonderful story. Thanks.
March 2nd, 2011 at 9:47 am
@JR
I hope when I am near death I will remember to remember what someone else thinks I should be thinking at that time and not what the near-death experience is giving me. The “Details” you speak of are up to the individual and likely jumbled by the ravaging of illness.
What you will remember and what this veteran remembers could be miles apart. When my mom was dying she thought I was ten years old. (everybody else that knows me thinks I’m closer to thirteen)
Enjoy the story for what it is rather than slam it for what it is not.
March 2nd, 2011 at 10:14 am
Vietnam brings up a lot of old wounds which need to be
healed, as this story helps do. Note the title “Veterans”
of War plural. Suffering is different for military veteran
and those who had to watch them suffer, not really able
to understand their experience.
March 2nd, 2011 at 10:27 am
Thank you all very much for the great comments! I usually don’t do this, but I’d like to respond to some comments individually, probably because I’m so emotionally invested in this story.
John Im, as always, you totally “get it”. Thank you!
JR, sorry! If I ever write another Vietnam era piece, I’ll run it past more than one Vietnam combat veteran to be sure I’ve got the terminology correct. My mistake.
Jason, hahahahahahahaha!
Walt, it was “Diamonds and Rust”. SORRY! And please do send your story to me, you’ve got my addys.
Mickey, come home from the VA safely, that’s all I ask.
March 2nd, 2011 at 10:40 am
One more thing: Seattle Jim, JR, Walt, Mickey and any other veterans on here, thank you for your service. You are my heroes.
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Well written, as always. But for me it resembled a slightly formulaic treatment of an issue that’s almost too sensitive for words. Just me, I guess.
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:32 pm
As a Brit I have trouble understanding this obsession with the Vietnam War and the high-tech conflict visited on the country and its people.
Maybe it’s time to move on to a more recent and relevant conflict. My high school English teacher said the same to me when I wrote Second World War stories.
That said, it’s a well written piece that evokes a lot of emotion.
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Take out the references to war and you still have the very moving story of someone losing a long-time love. Put yourself in the story. The references about when ‘we were nude and young and on fire’ and ‘gleaming blonde curls’ certainly hit home with me.
Course, there were the times when I wanted to set his blonde curls on fire with a blow torch, but on his death bed (which is where Debi put me during this read), I will be incredibly sad.
Five stars, even though I hate being sad on sunny days.
March 2nd, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Extrordinary scene, Debi. Immediate emotions, touchingly relayed.
I love the echoes of the ‘needles’ and the ‘missing parts’ in this — from the phonograph which needs the missing needle to play the record, to the needles in the hand of the vet, with his own parts missing from the ‘pieces sent home.’
Excellent!
March 2nd, 2011 at 2:37 pm
A great example of what can be accomplished with economy of language.
Nice work Debi.
March 2nd, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I absolutely love this. I wouldn’t change a word.
March 2nd, 2011 at 4:35 pm
And thank you again, my friends!
(LOL @ ajcap!)
March 2nd, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Top notch stuff! Short and precise, yet it packed a bittersweet punch.
March 3rd, 2011 at 7:05 am
Aw you had me in BITZ
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:32 am
Love it. War is over if you want it.
March 4th, 2011 at 5:44 am
Just niggled about someone on a respirator being able to speak. Usually, they can’t. That said, wonderful phrasing and economy of prose.
March 5th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
So touching. This is the best thing I’ve read on this website so far. (:
March 6th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Well, I was just looking around the web to discover what “Flash Fiction” is all about. I came to this site and more importantly, this story. Thank you Debi for moving me to tears and teaching me about this genre at the same time!
March 19th, 2011 at 11:24 pm
This is truly beautiful. It definitely resonated with me, because I lost a veteran family member not that long ago. I respectfully disagree with Paul’s (#18′s) English teacher about the relevance of the topic; people today are still suffering because of Vietnam and World War II, and that makes those conflicts very relevant. You did a lovely job on this story. I felt it.
March 20th, 2011 at 10:02 am
One of the takeaways from “Veterans” is its poignancy apart from Vietnam being a specific, meaningless, and controversial war. We’re currently prosecuting two wars and putting our toe in the water of a third. All have casualties — even among the living dead.