My Dad, a Veteran, Would Be Shocked by Today’s Anti-LGBTQ Bigotry
I can’t call him this Memorial Day, but when I’m scared, I remember his voice
Every Memorial Day, I think of my father.
Dad was in the Marine Corps during World War II — Okinawa and Guadalcanal. He brought home malaria and dengue fever — six feet tall, 120 pounds. He recovered, regained strength, lived.
My father rarely spoke of the war, and I was a young adult before I realized the impact of his experience. I called on Memorial Day, when I was in my early twenties, and asked if he was thinking about people he knew who died in combat. There was such a long pause that I thought we lost our connection. Then he answered with a single word: “Always.”
We talked for three hours.
I learned the name of his closest friend during the war, the taste of sea spray as his ship cut through the ocean, the crack of a bullet hitting his helmet. I learned the intensity of bonds that form under circumstances nobody should know. I learned the impossible stillness and chaos Dad felt as he cradled a dying Marine. I learned that my father pointed his gun at soldiers fighting for Hitler, and once at fellow Marines who were about to rape an adolescent in front of her grandparents. I learned that my father pulled men from the brig, citing their suddenly discovered expertise needed for his platoon — men in confinement for being “caught” with another man. I learned that my father — a screenwriter — chose the pen over the sword as he rebuilt his life, postwar.
Our Memorial Day phone conversations became a tradition. But I knew — and Dad knew I knew — that the majority of his experience would remain unspoken. Living in combat, day-to-day, is so specific to the situation, so incomprehensible to those of us who have never known first-hand the ravages of war — that the most powerful way to honor my father for serving his country was to respect that I could understand only a fraction of his experience.
My father died in his nineties, decades after his service ended, and I carry with me those Memorial Day talks — every story, every word, every inflection. Once a year on Memorial Day, I sit quietly and think about Dad’s friends, people I never met, who died in the war. I silently honor them for protecting and preserving the world I would be born into.
This year, Memorial Day arrives as hostility runs rampant against the LGBTQIA+ community, and I wonder if any of the men Dad pulled from the brig are still alive. I can imagine the expression on my father’s face — the heartbreak over bullying, the outrage over banned books, the disbelief that so many still don’t get how utterly normal the LGBTQIA+ spectrum truly is. I can picture my father stomping around his home office, pen in hand, muttering a percussive display of unprintable words, furious and saddened that bigotry continues to thrive.
As my country faces a time of extreme uncertainty, I have no idea what lies around the next corner. But neither did my father as he entered combat. In this moment, as we battle a different kind of enemy, I take strength from those who served. I know from history that we humans continually surprise ourselves with our capacity to cause hurt and harm. We also have the strength to face the unknown, to adjust in ways we never imagined, to rebuild our world, to thrive in a new frontier, to heal.
Sure, I’m scared, and sometimes my fear stops me in my tracks. Then I hear my father’s voice. I close my eyes and breathe his experience, his unbreakable bond with those who lived and with those who died. Does that take away my fear? Nope, I’m still scared.
I’m also ready.
