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Writing your memoir means you’re looking back at things, people & events that happened in your life, some of them wonderful and some, not so much. One very difficult time in my life was when my then husband was sent to Vietnam, just as thousands of other women’s husbands, brothers and fathers were. The Vietnam War was an unpopular war and there was little compassion for the soldiers or their families.
Our local group of military wives in Huntsville, Alabama where I’d chosen to live while my husband was in Vietnam, were young and on our own for the first time. Most of us had babies and small children. Suddenly, we were independent single parents with a few major differences: our husbands were in a remote jungle in a country we’d never heard of, fighting an unpopular war and getting killed by the thousands!
Author and her children In front of “consolation” car
Today‘s Excerpt from A Southern Belle in Paris:
WAR & FAITH
A few of us wives had gathered at Helen’s home who had just been notified that her husband had been killed. When we arrived, she was resting in the back bedroom after the Army doctor had given her a sedative to help her sleep. She was a personal friend and her three boys attended the Redstone Arsenal Army pre-school where I was working as the school’s director. I chose to work to stay busy and to be near Marie and Alex, now three and four and a half years old. We had come to watch her three boys and help them get through the next few days until family members arrived.
One of Helen’s young boys had turned on the television just as the latest brutal scene of dead bodies in Vietnam popped up on the screen. Without a word, one of the women quickly scooped him up and took him outside to play with the other children while another silently walked over and turned off the television set.
“You never know what you’re going to see on television anymore,” she said, quietly pouring another cup of coffee from the coffee pot that we kept going. Many of the women had become smokers; many were drinking too much. I, who had insisted to high heaven that my husband never take another sip of alcohol, was having an occasional drink and smoking an occasional cigarette. My weight had dropped from 110 lbs. to 95 lbs. and I was anything but calm knowing that my husband could be the next soldier to be declared dead.
“I mean, do they have to give us the body count every day on the nightly news? That’s just the time the kids and I sit down for supper. It’s awful!” Charlene said, crushing out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Although we all noticed the ashes spilling over onto the table, no one said anything or made a move to clean it up. Sometimes we just didn’t care if things were clean or not. What did it matter?
“Well, one good thing about the news, if there is one, is that we’re learning the names of all those awful places in Vietnam,” Sharon, a young twenty-two-year-old with a newborn spoke up.
We all nodded in agreement. If we recognized any of the places reported on the news that had suffered particularly brutal attacks and knew someone’s husband was serving there, we’d pick up the phone and give a call. “Bring the kids and come over right now,” we’d say to her. “Don’t stay another minute by yourself!”
All we wives pretended that everything was normal; pretended that we had happy, adjusted lives. After all, war was a natural thing, wasn’t it? Were there any reasonable, viable alternatives to war? We had to have the upper hand on those who were seeking to kill us, didn’t we? Didn’t necessity dictate that our country had to have a strong defense against bullies and evildoers in other parts of the world that threated our national security? My military husband and those husbands of the other young women believed those things to be true and were putting their lives on the line to prove it. Was there any room for healthy doubt and questioning of the war if our husbands and brothers were fighting and getting killed? Certainly, most Americans at the time were questioning the presence of our military in the jungles of Vietnam. If we truly loved and supported our husbands and our country, however, could we do anything less than wait, be patient and pray that God would see us through the ordeal?
*****
With these disturbing questions about God and faith rumbling about in my head, I decided to seek counsel with the Army Base Chaplin whom I knew and trusted because he’d been a Baptist minister before entering the military service.
The Chaplin, a very tall man who had to bend to get through the door, greeted me with his big-toothy smile, and pointed to a chair in front of his desk for me to be seated.
“Chaplin Jones, I hardly know where to begin…” was all I could say before I burst into tears.
“There, there. It’s all okay,” he assured me, pointing to a box of Kleenex on the corner of his desk. “You know Jesus always has an answer for us if we trust in him.”
“You know my husbands in Vietnam, Pastor, and I’m really afraid he’s going to get killed,” I managed to say before breaking into sobs again.
He waited.
“I’ve been seeing all these pictures on television showing Vietnamese women and children running in the streets and throwing themselves on the bloody dead bodies of their husbands…” Once more I broke off, sobbing and grabbing more tissues.
“Go on, go on,” he urged, folding his hands calmly and precisely on his desk.
“I don’t understand how God is only going to protect me and my husband and our American soldiers just because we’re Christians,” I said, managing to regain some composure.
“Mrs. Canto, Mrs. Canto,” he said several times barely hiding a slightly exasperated tone. “These are issues best left to us theologians. You shouldn’t worry your pretty little head about such matters. Just trust in the knowledge that you are saved through your belief in Christ Jesus. Let Him take care of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. Now, I’m a busy man as you might well imagine.”
He stood up, a signal our time was over. Grabbing my purse, I stood up too, taking in the not-so-subtle cue. Once again Chaplin Jones flashed his big-toothy smile at me, walked around the desk, and reaching out his hand, patted me on the top of my head!
“Now don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Canto. Your husbands in God’s hands and you know God is a merciful God. He’s not going to let anything happen to your husband if it can be helped. Pray. Pray. Don’t forget to pray!”
With these words, he took my elbow and steered me towards the office door.
“You just call me anytime you want to talk. Now remember; don’t you go worrying about who or what God does or doesn’t do. That’s up to God. Just turn those questions over to God when they come up. Give them up to God!”
With tears stinging at the corners of my eyes, I finally found my sexy red MGBGT sports car my husband had bought me before leaving for Vietnam, a sort of thank-you-for-being-such-a-good-sport-for-me-going-off-to-war-instead-of-Canada-like-you-wanted-me-to-do present. I didn’t know what had just happened in Chaplin Jones office but something had played out terribly wrong. I had just poured my heart out, full of concern for the Vietnamese women in the same position as myself, to a minister of God only to have him reach over and pat me on the head? Only to have him advise me not to worry that pretty little head about such philosophical questions and to just let God take care of everything? Was I just a child in a woman’s body to him and in the eyes of the church?
Even though I wasn’t in the mainstream of intellectuals who at the time were proclaiming that God was dead, that day sitting in my fancy sports car in the parking lot of the Army Chapel dedicated to God and His Holy word, I felt it in my gut.
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Wild Women Write: Reconnecting with the Wild Feminine
Wild Women Write takes you to the core of your instinctual feminine essence by familiarizing you with tales & stories of women who walked in their power, providing archetypal models to reclaim & reconnect to that sacred place within ourselves that is both wild and powerful. Writing & art exercises help you to dive deep into your own unique self & to express what you find there!
Writes of Passage: Writing Through the Seasons of Your Life
Have you been wanting to write your memoir… tell your life story but don’t know where to start? Writes of Passage is the perfect book to help you get started. For each of the four phases of your life: childhood, young adult, mature adult, & elder, there are writing & art exercises that will give you all the material you’ll need to begin your memoir!
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Aloha! Marjorie