how many posts do you start and never finish? i had a couple posts about my cleveland trip planned, but now they seem kinda trivial.
the good: going to the rock'n'roll hall of fame, the class itself and learning what the military does to protect its soldiers and being treated like celebrities. we had to walk 2 blocks back and forth from the hotel to the class and everytime we walked people were honking their horns, leaning out of their windows and cheering for us, coming up to us in the sam's club and shaking our hands. i went for a run one night in civvies and someone recognized me and started honking and yelling "army strong".
the bad: more pay issues, and some frank discussions about state of mind. i'm not the only one with some anger issues. a couple of our guys have been in therapy since we've been back. and i'm not the only one who's getting considerably more aggressive the more i'm wearing the uniform and "putting my game face on". what worried me alot was one night i woke up and thought alot about death. not suicide or anything like that, but the whiney "oh, that'd solve alot of problems if..." not a big deal, but just so anti- my normal self. i'm pretty upbeat normally, when i bitch it's usually about a specific person or circumstance and i get it out of my system and then i try to fix the situation.
but this weekend alot of that became moot. one of our guys killed himself saturday night. nobody is quite sure what happened yet, if it was PTSD or stuff unrelated to the military. all i know is a poor 22 year old kid is gone and his friends and family are left trying to figure it all out. the guy was adopted and i'm sure his family is going to carry around some guilt, whether it's founded or not.
i didn't know the guy well. he's been on a couple of the training missions i've been on so i've been "in charge" of him a couple of times. i had high hopes for him and was pushing him a little whenever i had an opportunity to. he seemed like a good guy. he really surprised me when we flew back from north carolina a couple months ago and he spent the entire flight reading a bible.
his funeral will be in a couple days and i've been tapped for his funeral detail. on active duty i was tasked for funeral detail every year and have probably had the honor of performing in 30 or so of them. the difference with all of those was that it was complete strangers. i never knew the guy we were there for. this will be different and hopefully i don't screw my part of it up.
7 comments:
I re-read your post three times trying to think of something appropriate to say. While I'm not necessarily for this war, I do appreciate the blood, sweat and tears (and more) of every soldier. I can not imagine what the life of a soldier is like, or what thoughts that experience provokes.
I'm sorry, Sean. That's terrible news. Good luck.
Take care of yourself.
I'm sorry to read this. :( We are in the military too so we know how hard it is...our lives are different from those of normal civillians... as are our worries. We're thinking of you during this sad time. :(
I see "shitty" is the theme of things these days.
I'm sorry your struggling with anger and death and in the midst of all of it being sent to partake in a funeral. You won't screw anything up. Seriously. I promise.
Hang in there, tiger.
Words don't work here. Read my mind.
Yikes, that's hard. I'm not sure there is really anything appropriate for me to say, other than I'm sure you'll do fine. I think too often people don't get the help they need, especially those that feel like they're supposed to be "tough" and don't show weakness easily.
So sorry to hear about this untimely death, it's always hard when it is a young person, and you think what if they could have just held out one more day...anyway, I know how suicide affects the ones left behind even if we don't know the person well it still leaves an impact...as it has on you...best of luck adjusting and learning to cope.
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