The Last True Story
I read John Crawford’s book The Last True Story I’ll Every Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq twice this week.
I read it looking for some insight into what my ex/partner might have experienced, some insight into her behavior. I found some. But what I did not find was an answer as to how to help her on her return.
The first story that Crawford wrote for the book is the last story in the book. In it he tells of his dream of return. Driving to his home town with his wife by his side he meets up with his buddies from high school who then ask him for a war story. He imagines the story he would tell them but doesn’t tell it. In that moment he realizes how alienated he is. He has gone through something that no one understands. That story of his return is a dream though, and he wakes to find himself contemplating the truth of that alienation. That is the story I would expect to hear.
But he ends the book telling the truth of his return. “Most days I was sick. It was a lingering, wasting sickness that comes only when you have nothing left. There are people who really don’t know why they get up in the morning; it’s sad, and that’s how you know it’s true.
In my dream, my wife never told me that things would have been better off if I had just never come home. In reality, I agree with her.”
My fear after reading his book is that even if his dream of return were true, that he had people around him who loved and supported him, it would have made no difference.
The truth is that knowing the patterns does little to help avoid them. My fear is that my soldier, my friend, is lost to me. The woman I fell in love with moved permanently away from me once she realized in 2001 that her life might soon end in war.
I know that this year has left me changed. I will never again think in such simple terms about such a complicated issue. I cannot imagine my life twenty years from now thinking back on this year and this love without profound sadness. I have been waiting for things to be better, but Crawford’s book makes me doubt the possibility of a happy ending.
I read it looking for some insight into what my ex/partner might have experienced, some insight into her behavior. I found some. But what I did not find was an answer as to how to help her on her return.
The first story that Crawford wrote for the book is the last story in the book. In it he tells of his dream of return. Driving to his home town with his wife by his side he meets up with his buddies from high school who then ask him for a war story. He imagines the story he would tell them but doesn’t tell it. In that moment he realizes how alienated he is. He has gone through something that no one understands. That story of his return is a dream though, and he wakes to find himself contemplating the truth of that alienation. That is the story I would expect to hear.
But he ends the book telling the truth of his return. “Most days I was sick. It was a lingering, wasting sickness that comes only when you have nothing left. There are people who really don’t know why they get up in the morning; it’s sad, and that’s how you know it’s true.
In my dream, my wife never told me that things would have been better off if I had just never come home. In reality, I agree with her.”
My fear after reading his book is that even if his dream of return were true, that he had people around him who loved and supported him, it would have made no difference.
The truth is that knowing the patterns does little to help avoid them. My fear is that my soldier, my friend, is lost to me. The woman I fell in love with moved permanently away from me once she realized in 2001 that her life might soon end in war.
I know that this year has left me changed. I will never again think in such simple terms about such a complicated issue. I cannot imagine my life twenty years from now thinking back on this year and this love without profound sadness. I have been waiting for things to be better, but Crawford’s book makes me doubt the possibility of a happy ending.
posted by Kate Hatch at 5:44 PM
1 Comments:
War sacrifices a generation of men and women for the hope of the child. This is war's only hope; However, not all wars birth freedom, but more war to come.
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