CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Intentional Time of Remembrance

After so many years of war, it’s hard to believe the fighting is all over and peace is here again.—August 10, 1945

I knew Dad would be at his men’s Bible study, so I walked over to talk to my mom. She heated a cup of coffee for herself and made me a cup of tea. I leaned against the kitchen counter while we waited for the hot water.

“I’m still worried about Dad,” I said.

“I know. I am too,” she said.

We sat at the kitchen table. Just outside the window, below the fence, was the top of a twenty-foot retaining wall. Below, Mill Creek ran wildly. Whenever temperatures were unseasonably warm, run-off from the Blue Mountains would cause the creek to overflow. If we’d opened the window, the roar of it would have made it impossible to hear each other.

We sipped our hot drinks without talking. Then Mom broke the silence.

“You know,” she said. “A few years after we got married, in maybe 1951 or 1952, I looked out the window and saw these two guys coming up the walk. They wore black suits and white shirts and stiff ties. They were FBI men. They asked for your dad. When he came to the door, they told him that he was now released to talk about what he did during the war.”

“Really?” I asked.

She wrapped her hands around the coffee cup and stared at the raging water below.

“Yes,” she said. “And that was the last we heard of it.”

“Did he have nightmares or anything back then?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“He didn’t,” she replied. “I do remember that once I startled him and he said never to do that again. That was out of character for him. But other than that, I never saw any signs that anything was wrong.”

“So many veterans talk about being jumpy or hitting the ground when they hear a car backfire,” I said. “But for him, I think it was just put on a shelf, like the notebooks.”

She looked at me then.

“And those notebooks,” my mother said. “You know they sat on that same shelf all those years. I knew they were there. But I just moved them every now and then, dusted, and put them back.” Her demeanor changed.

“You didn’t have any reason to think any more about them,” I tried to reassure her. “Why would you?”

She looked down.

“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” I said. “I feel like the timing was just right. You know? This was meant to come to the surface now.”

She nodded.

As a child I hadn’t really wanted to listen to his stories. Then I went to college, got married, and had three children. If he’d hinted at something or mentioned it in passing, my life was so crazy busy that I probably wouldn’t have caught on. If there was a right time for things like this, then this was probably it.

“Yes,” my mother said. “God’s timing is perfect.”

“You know, Mom,” I said, “this whole thing has really tested my faith. There are times when he is hurting so much and I just don’t understand. If God is so good, why would He allow Dad to remember such painful things so late in life? I mean, why not just let him live out his life in peace?”

It seemed cruel, unfair. He had lived for decades without being haunted by this. But now, when he was the least able to deal with the nightmare he’d lived through, there it was. It didn’t make sense to me.

“But he never was at peace,” my mother said. “Even before this, there was always something wrong. I could sense this wall he’d built up around himself. And through the years it got higher, thicker. He never let anyone get close—until now.”

“But he’s not at peace any more now than he was before,” I said. “It seems like all of this was for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” she said sitting up straighter. “It wasn’t for nothing. Maybe this is just a piece of it, this telling of his story. But there is more to come. I just want him to find peace. I want him to die in peace.”

Unlike my father, my mother talked often about her own mortality. She gave things away and got on a list for a retirement home. She worried about the three of us girls having to go through the process of cleaning out the house when they were gone.

Dad was on the opposite end of the spectrum. He’d have nothing to do with talk of death or dying. I wondered if it was possible for him to change now.

“I told the men at my Bible study about Mal,” my father said the next Wednesday.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah. We were ready to leave and I asked if anyone knew what PTSD was. No one did, except for our minister, Chuck Hindman. So then I shared the whole story. You could have heard a pin drop,” he said.

It was the first time he’d shared the story with his friends.

“Of course,” I replied. “It’s quite a story, Dad. Did you tell them about breaking the code?”

“Yes,” he said. “I told them about the whole thing, even about Mal. And then when everyone else left, Chuck asked me about it. He asked if he could come over and talk about it. I told him that you were writing my story. Would you want to come over for that?”

“Sure,” I said.

The whole journey we’d taken together seemed to have drained him. It hadn’t had the effect I’d hoped for. I wanted him to have peace. Maybe his minister could help.

We met in my parents’ living room. Chuck took out a notebook and sat in the chair closest to my father. My mom and I sat on the sofa, listening. He asked my father lots of questions and wrote down his answers. Chuck thought of things I hadn’t. He asked where Mal had been hit. I was surprised to learn that he’d been hit in the forehead—I had assumed it was in the chest. He asked about the relationship between my father and Mal. Dad had a hard time remembering some things, but other times his memory was vivid.

I just sat and listened. I didn’t understand what exactly it was that Chuck was doing. Will he want to go outside by the flagpole and say a prayer? I wondered. Will we have some kind of a ceremony when he is finished? But he just took notes.

He concluded by thanking my father for sharing the story of his friendship with Mal. Dad smiled. I thanked him as he stood, still unsure of what exactly was going on. When Chuck walked to the door, I followed him. Mom and Dad were talking about something briefly, so I asked him what would come next.

“Well, I’m going to go home and type this up,” he said. “I’ve done this with many, many people, Karen,” the minister said. “I’ve found that there’s healing in having an intentional time of remembrance. During war, there isn’t time to stop and remember the one that has passed. When veterans come back from war, even today, setting aside some time to remember those they’ve lost can make a big difference. I’ve seen it time and again. It’s healthy. Dealing with death is part of living.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I’ve never thought about it that way. I’m sure you’re right.”

“Since you are the keeper of the memories,” he said, “can I email what I write up to you?”

“Sure,” I said.

A few days later, it arrived. And I understood. He wrote the words that a pastor or minister might say at a funeral. He wrote them just as he would for someone who had just died. But this memorial, typed and sent through email, was more than sixty years after Mal’s death. Somehow, in those few hours we were together, Chuck had understood. He had really understood.

But the memorial needed a place to be read. I thought about the places around Walla Walla where we could do a memorial for Mal. The Blue Mountains were just a short distance away, but there was probably a few feet of snow at this time of year. I thought about the flagpole he’d erected in memory of Mal. But even that didn’t seem quite right. Over the next few days, I couldn’t get one very specific place out of my mind: Hawaii.

I called my mom one afternoon.

“I wish he’d go back to Hawaii,” I said. “We could do some kind of a memorial for Mal.”

“Well that’s one thing he won’t agree to,” she said. “The trip would be too hard on him. But I’ll pray about it.”

While my mother prayed, my sister Susan and I worked on Dad. Susan sent him emails and talked to him on the phone. I did the same. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was just a feeling, but it was a strong feeling. This might be the only chance my father had at living out his days in peace. He was eighty-five years old.

Dad, as predicted, wasn’t agreeable to the idea. There was no point arguing that the trip would not be difficult for him. His back often hurt when he sat for more than an hour, let alone five hours on a cramped plane. He’d been having more and more trouble walking any distance at all, so what would he do in Hawaii if he couldn’t walk very far? His arguments were logical. They made complete sense. But I couldn’t shake the strong feeling that this was his chance.

Finally, I decided to have a heart-to-heart with him. I walked over to his house, rehearsing what I’d say to him. But when I got there, I just spoke from the heart.

“Dad,” I said, “when you first gave me the letters you wrote to your folks, I never imagined what I’d learn about you. When I decided to transcribe them, that’s all I was going to do. I just wanted my kids to each have a copy. But something happened along the way. Slowly, you told me the real story. And that real story included your friend Mal. I feel like he’s a part of our family now.”

My father leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. A tear ran down his cheek.

“I’ve watched you when you were sad. I know you feel guilty that you survived and Mal didn’t. But you didn’t get a chance to just stop and remember Mal. You were in the middle of a war. Mal died and you were whisked off to the hospital. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We can’t grieve properly without stopping everything to take the time to do it. You couldn’t do that during the war. But you can do it now. I want to be there with you when you do.”

My father leaned forward, taking a handkerchief from his pocket. He held it to his face.

“I know it’ll be a hard trip for you, Dad. Susan knows that and Mom knows that. But we’ll do everything we can to make it the best it can be for you. You don’t have to say anything at all right now. I just wanted you to know why I think this is so important.”

I stood to leave and then turned around.

“I love you, Dad,” I said.

I left then. I walked out the door and down the street. I held my emotions in check until I opened the door to my house. Then I sobbed like a baby.

I hoped he’d call or come by that night but he didn’t. I went to bed that night with a heavy heart. My husband tried to console me.

“You did everything you could,” he said.

But even after all this time, I still felt like I could have done more.

The next morning my mother called.

“Your father wants to go to Hawaii,” she said.

My father, the man who said he’d never go back to Hawaii again, had a change of heart. In the chaos of planning the trip, I didn’t have time to share the memorial that the minister had written up. But I printed off three copies as I scrambled to make arrangements for the house and the husband and children I’d be leaving behind. My sister Susan planned to go too and worked feverishly to make the travel arrangements for us.

We left Walla Walla on a bleak, cold day in January. Five hours later, my mother, father, sister, and I stepped off the plane in Hawaii.