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| Departure |
Morning, Imaginary Friend! Would you like some breakfast? Coffee? *pours you a cup and starts making omelettes*
I feel quasi-better today, probably because I dragged myself out of bed for a 6:15 a.m. yoga class. We'll see how I feel when the endorphins wear off.
In the shower this morning, I was randomly thinking about departures. More specifically, I was remembering the day when, as a newspaper reporter, I had to cover the sendoff festivities for the first Chicago area troops heading out to Afghanistan. (8 years ago, wow!) I parked my car at the armory and climbed into a blackhawk helicopter with a photographer and the radio news reporter I had grown up listening to. We arrived at the Great Lakes facility, where we were wanded, patted down, signed in, and then sent to the press area. I was so thrilled to be standing up on that platform with the personalities I had seen at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily through my childhood. I felt proud of myself, like I was one of the big kids for the first time ever.
But then the reality of what I was seeing down on the floor of that hangar struck me. There, uniformed, standing in ranks, were hundreds of kids, young men, and young women who were going off to war. War. Not the troop maneuvering, chess piece moving kind of war game, but the bloody, frightful, life-wrecking, real war. Sure, the energetic, upbeat brass band was playing, and people were waving and cheering, the USO folks were buzzing about everywhere, and the soldiers were standing there basking in the glory of a warrior's sendoff.
Nobody was acknowledging the elephant in the room-- Some of these soldiers would not be returning. Bullets and incendiary devices were real, and some of these folks would feel the pain of being blown apart, burned, shot. I was still stunned by this realization as the ranks started marching past the press platform. Cameras were clicking. My colleague Oscar was happily clicking away, adjusting lenses, lying on the ground to get the closest shot possible. About the third or fourth group into this strange parade, two familiar faces popped out at me. One was J, the kid who sat next to me in algebra class my freshman year of high school. We spent a lot of time chatting and laughing that year. The second face was a little more shocking to me-- it was R. R, my scholastic bowl teammate. R, a boy with whom I had been just a smidge more than just friends my junior year.
I knew might never see those boys again. They were just kids! What were we doing sending kids off to die? My pen scribbled in my notebook as if on autopilot while I just stared at the two faces I knew so well. I wanted to jump off my platform and go grab those two by their lapels and arrange some sort of escape. Foolish, I know. They signed up for this. They wanted to go. But I was convinced at that moment that they didn't know what they were actually signing up for.
No one else on the platform seemed so tempst-tossed as I did. It was just a job. Take the pictures, say a few nice words, write your story, and go home. They'd been doing it for years. But I was new to this and not jaded enough to just watch the news happen and report on it without caring about anything other than the number of copies that story would sell. I wanted to get off that platform and stop the news from happening. Stop the war.
I knew that the second I leaped down there, the guards would drag me away. I wouldn't get close enough to J or R to talk my desperate sense into them. So I stayed where I was. The pen kept scribbling. Oscar's camera shutter kept clicking. The NBC and ABC and CBS news crews around me kept yabbering away. I bit my lips. And on the helicopter ride home, I was silent. The radio reporter asked me how I felt going on my first important assignment. I faked a smile and pointed up toward the loud rotors, then at my earplugs. I pretended I couldn't hear him and stared out the window the rest of the way home.
The story made front page. Above the fold. I couldn't even bring myself to look at it.
One came back. The other, I don't know what happened to him.
Imaginary Friend, I know you see thousands and thousands of people, and most of them on a short-term basis. But when you say goodbye to someone you really started to feel close to, whether new friend or old, do you feel a tug that makes you want to grab them by the shoulders and beg them not to leave? Am I just too passionate about this? I do so hate goodbyes.
Have you ever had to watch something frightening happening, completely powerless to do anything about it?
Do tell, Imaginary Friend. I'm all ears.
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Year of haiku, day 6
Head-achy, coughing,
flexing sore muscles, hoping
I don't have the flu.
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Posted by Pipedreamer on 2009-11-03 10:56:02 | Rating: | Views: 20
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