I remember the night . . .
I watched my husband walk into the darkness, fading out of sight. His orders, I thought, were sending him safely to Thailand. What I didn't know at the time was that before he set foot in that Asian paradise, he would spend several life-changing months in Vietnam, keeping those memories sealed in his soul.
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As he walked out of sight that night, I wondered if I would ever see him again and I tried to calm my fears by immersing myself in day to day life. At night, however, I would sit in my room paging through his many blue-patterned letters, hanging on to every word as if I had only one chance to catch his thoughts.
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Several months after his departure that dark night, I boarded a plane for Thailand, eager to be together again with the author of those blue-patterned letters. The first stop across the Pacific was the friendly islands of the Philippines. The next was the empty tarmac of war-torn Saigon. Security was tight and only a few were allowed off the plane walking onto the black landing strip and into eternity. The rest of us sat on the plane, eager to be whisked away to a better destination.

In the morning, I emerged from the plane and felt the blast of hot humid air seek to dominate my thoughts as I searched below for happy soldier waiting for me. There he was, laughing at our togetherness in a welcoming land, where life was secure and fears faded in the sunlight.

Our many conversations didn't include stories about his time in Vietnam even though it was still fresh in time. Actually, I wondered sometimes if he'd even been there, not knowing that the trauma lay asleep deep inside.

After returning to the states, leaving the military, finishing a seminary degree, and returning to active duty, we stood together at the Wall in the nation's capital, looking beyond our reflections. The feeling was awesome for me but still his experience in Vietnam remained sealed. Time hushed my questions and finally we were nearing the end of a fulfilling military career. This time, we stood in front of another wall, the moving memory of Vietnam's lost. There in the vastness of the Midwest, the Texas sod held us up without explanation. We eagerly reached out to veterans and consoled widows. Barriers held for years began to crack and emotions trickled out.

Those months dodging bullets, guarding perimeters, and blessing troops were gone but not forgotten. Whenever and wherever they met, retired brothers of wars past easily bonded. Finally, those veterans wrapped in a clouded history began to reach out to their children's children returning from other wars and in the midst of the applause of airport patriots they pondered healing.

So it was on this memorial day, I found myself with my beloved looking into chiseled ebony at a national cemetery's memorial and easily feeling at home. I knew where I stood, one foot in the past and the other in a time I never dreamed of.

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