This here may be a day or two late, holiday-wise, but as far as I'm concerned it's a couple years going. Memorial Day is supposed to be for honoring our fallen soldiers, and generally, that's those who died in war. Today I'm putting some brain aside to remember someone who died well after.
The other day at work I met a man who had to be hitting his eighties or so. He was walking by himself and he had some oomph left in him, considering the hardware I sold him. I meet a fair few fellows such as him. But I always look at their hats. Just to be sure.
This particular man was wearing a cap that read BATTLE OF THE BULGE VETERANS--ARDENNES. Maybe it was just how timely it was. But I got choked up a bit, when the association got some gears turning in the noggin. All I could do for him was slap him with a discount. I didn't have time or the courage to ask him about it. But that's old news. I never asked Grandpa K., either. And until I find his scrapbooks--and I intend to--I'll know nothing of it.
He crossed the Rhine in the night. The Battle of the Bulge went on for more than a month, but I figure Gramps put the river behind him toward the end of it in January of 1945. All I know is that he was tall and skinny then, about as skinny as me, and younger, I think--and that he never went to fireworks after that. "There wasn't any point as far as he was concerned," my dad said. "He used to say that the bombs lit up the night like it was noonday and the sound of it knocked the wind from your chest." I was real little then, but I had the notion that it might not be so much that Grampa was jaded, and more that he was scared. I was little, but I understood that. And that's where I think I developed the fear that kept me from talking to him about it.
Grampa spent most of his retirement in the basement. We all called it the Bunker. He watched the Braves down there and painted models of tanks and such he used to shoot at with his .30 caliber machine gun. It was his Batcave, his sanctuary, and just as I was afraid to venture down there as I was afraid to bring any of it up. Before he got bad, it was full of beer cans and chip bowls and little bottles of acrylic, all strewn about on little plywood fixtures. I didn't know much about his home life then, because the last time I saw the bunker I was about half the age I am. Mother hadn't told me yet about the drinking and the hitting and the calls to the police and about Grandma tucking in seven kids with a black eye and that particular Catholic stoicism. But even then, I wondered just what the old man was hiding from down there.
I might never know. He had three grandsons before me. One grew up in Edinburgh and two in Jersey and I haven't the faintest if he ever got close to any of them. Grandma's doing alright considering the stroke but I've got no plans to strain her. And the last people he'd ever have spoken to on his military days were his children. He never did let them play war. No pretend rifles, no pitched battles on the lawn. I don't know if he'd tell me more than he told anyone in the bottom half of his life, and I felt selfish about about asking. And it's a couple years late now.
I've never known what stories I wanted to hear, or what I'd take from them, but I think there is something strongly American about wanting to keep this legacy alive. For whatever we stand to gain from it. Whether it's regret, or respect, or some deeper understanding of where my generation came from--in contrast to the so-called Greatest. Simply seemed to me that stories were useless gone untold. And at the end of things, I think, that's all a man has to give.
So sure. I can't know if Grampa was just waiting for one of us to talk to him. Can't know if that was a release that he was too reserved to give to himself. Can't know if I did the right thing by keeping my mouth shut. Had I the chance, I don't know if I'd dredge up all that on him. But I'm remembering. For what it's worth.
The old fellow with the Ardennes hat--I punched some buttons. I gave him 10 percent off and I didn't mention it. Literally the least I could do. I mumbled "Thank you". And that's supposed to be how we retail folk are supposed to say goodbye, handbook says, but I wasn't just talking to him.
For what it's worth.
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