My Heroes

Powerwashed into the Concrete. I sent to Ryan.

From the earliest I could remember my Dad was always my hero.

Panama // Desert Shield/Desert Storm // Korea (x3) // Bosnia // Kosovo // Iraq (x?) // Afghanistan (x?)

As a UH-60 maintenance test pilot he spent more years deployed than home in our lives growing up. Yellow Ribbons, Handwritten Letters scrawled on yellow legal notepads sent through no-stamp-needed envelopes, Flags & Poster Board Signs on a parade field or hangar or outside an airline gate (back when you could still do that), acronyms which needed no explanation but belonged to a small club of kids (PX, TDY, PCS, etc.) all of these pieces were our normal. I loved trips to the air field, climbing up in the back or into the cockpit of this crazy piece of equipment. I loved listening to his stories; I loved opening his maps and learning how to read them; I loved the budgeting lessons sitting next to him at the secretary; I loved sitting on the garage floor with the smell of sawdust as he improved our house with his own hands; I loved trips to the range since age 8 for target practice.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my mom also. I am just a mirror image of my father.

I inherited his intelligence (cultivated by a mom who taught professionally and always found time to continue that with her kids at home), his work ethic, his scientifically-inquisitive mind, his stubbornness, his drive to succeed, his no-nonsense approach to others. He was my hero.

From 2001-2011 I lost track of when and where he was going. Those years just jumble together partly because I was in college for half that time and it became hard to separate the years and locations when you’re no longer living at home. Couple that with 3 deployments in 5 years by my oldest brother who went in 18X to the SF-baby program and recycled to llB and was sent to Ft Hood. Another hero of mine: who earned his Purple Heart in 2007 after his first tour in Iraq. He still went back 2 more times, extending his contract the 3rd time just so he would finish out the full tour with his unit.

My brother came back different. There were times where I wondered if I was going to have to be driving up to Killeen to ID his body; I was the only family member in Texas so I would have been the closest physically. He self-described as a “bum” the year after he returned. The country asked both old men and young boys to live through experiences of combat that they should never have to know. My brother lost friends to war and at least 2 other buddies to suicide.

For some reason, it was only on the last tour to Afghanistan that I worried about my father. As a military brat, you know what men in uniform walking up to your front porch means, though it never seemed like that could be our reality. My father seemed indestructible up until his last tour, where brevity of life because much more of an option. With my brother, that option seemed possible every day he woke up in Iraq, for me.

I remember that day in 2009 well…ultimately it was 36 hours before my brother landed back at Ft. Hood. We knew he was on his way back. I was waiting for a call from Maine so I could get an ETA on picking him up when they landed. I hadn’t gotten a call but I saw the headline scroll across every TV… Please no, please don’t let him be back at Hood right now.  

I have an MO, it seems, when it comes to dating. I have stuck with soldiers (incl. prior service) and those in public service. They say women have a thing for guys in uniform – I suppose I have a thing for strong sacrificial men. Some of those ended amicably and others were mistakes that I absolutely chose wrong, they were not men that knew how to treat a woman. In 2011 I met for the first time a man that I felt embodied the qualities of a hero that I saw from my dad and brothers.

Ryan was incredible. I was in awe of his intelligence, his analytical mind, the way he kept in touch with friends and family, the love for his mom that was so evident from day 1; I was amazed by his raw honesty. I appreciated his compassion, his service to others, his affection toward me. He was capable, and he showed me, of a unique level of selflessness. He had taken over the role of the most important Hero in my life.

Watching him practice as a Paramedic, he was my role model for what not just a mediocre but an outstanding EMT I should and could be. I appreciated that he cared more about doing what was right for his patients than what was standard or lazy. I appreciated that he could have all of the book knowledge in the world, but he could look them someone the eyes and tell each one what was best for them. It broke my heart to hear about him being lectured and threatened for treating a patient like a person – for not “selling” the ambulance ride to the hospital to a young mother whose sick child did not need a $1000 EMS bill for an ER trip at 1am, but a visit to the pediatrician the next morning. He was doing his job as a provider and a human being and yet criticized for that.

Compassion took its toll. He would ask me "Just remind me that you need me". I'd sit on his lap and wrap my body around him in silence, kissing his forehead or resting my chin on his shoulder, whispering "I love you; we're going to get through this" on those really bad days. I'd walk up behind him and rub his shoulders when, woken up in the middle of the night to find the space empty beside me, he was sitting at the computer unable to sleep. He'd kiss my hands and promise me "Sleep schedule is just off Baby". You get used to missing holidays and anniversaries, special events and dinner plans. 

You don't ever get used to seeing the other half of your heart broken and hurting, turning to vices to sleep and crushed under the weight of "what if?" Terrified that the compassion they showed, the honesty they gave to their patient would result in losing their job.

My brothers are here. My father is here. The Hero I chose to love is not. For me, this still seems inconceivable. The stigma of suicide among soldiers and by first responders feels, to me, like this gaping silence of heroes forgotten and cast off by the communities and the society that they served. Why?