Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

nanofever · 11-15-2003, 06:51 PM

Read your poem and it reminded me of something I wrote a while ago...

When my family was living at the United Stated Air Force Base, in Wiesbaden, Germany, my father frequently flew on C-130’s to and from “training missions.” He was a radar technician, so flying to remote locations to provide technical support was not out of the ordinary. One day in late September 1996, he was coming home from a six-month mission. My mom and I were watching his plane come in with all the other families and then something strange happen. The plane was on approach to land when it suddenly broke-off its approach and started to climb. We thought that the plane had made a bad approach and was trying to make another runway approach. The plane circled around and made another attempt at landing, it failed to land this time too and we started to worry. After the third failure the plane went into a holding pattern; this is when we went to find the flight controller on duty. The flight controller, a close friend of the family, said that the plane was having difficulty with one of its landing gears, and it would have to land on three of its four landing gears. We had an opportunity to speak with him before the landing, and he said that he loved us very much. The plane landing was fine; until the landing gears caved-in under the plane’s weight, and the plane started skidding on the runway. The sparks looked horrible but everyone on-board was okay, except for my father. He suffered a compound fracture in both legs, the kind where the bone has broken in several places and pierced the skin. The damage in his legs was extensive, and he lost both of them in the hospital later that week, in a combination of hemorrhaging, gangrene and infection.
This ended his career in the Air Force. He was given a medical discharge as a double-amputee, but he received a two-hundred dollar a week lifetime pension. He was never the same after the accident; all he did was lay in bed and think about ways to end his suffering. About a year or so after the accident he recovered from his depression and began to live his life again. This is when I was in sixth grade, and he started involving himself with my school. He came to all of my soccer games, and he was sitting in the aisle when I graduated to middle school. That summer I went to soccer camp to prepare for junior high soccer – my father killed himself that summer. I was told by an elderly neighbor that he went outside one Sunday morning before church, in full military uniform, saluted the flag and killed himself with his service pistol. They held a full military funeral for him, and we received a folded flag in the shape of a triangle. This is a lot like when author Tim O’Brien loses his Vietnam squad-mates in the book “The Things They Carried” – only his squad-mates weren’t real and neither is this story. Well sure, O’Brien served as a grunt in Vietnam and a lot of his friends died, but his book are written to tell an emotion – not to retell a story.
My family did live on Wiesbaden Air Force Base for a year, and my father was a radar technician but that is where the truth ends. My father was never in a plane crash. He never lost his legs. He never committed suicide on Sunday morning. My father is 39, divorced from my mother, and he lives in southern Indiana. We rarely talk and it seems as though he is dead sometimes. Even though he isn’t dead, it is usually easier to pretend that he doesn’t exist, and his presumed “death” is a means to this end. Much like O’Brien’s writings for himself, writing this was a catharsis for me and a little bit of empathy practice for you. You got to work that “humane imagination” muscle and feel sorry for my family for a few minutes. And you might believe that this was a trite way to avoid telling a personal story but as O’Brien said "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

11-15-2003, 06:51 PM	#8 (permalink)
nanofever Huzzah for Welcome Week, Much beer shall I imbibe. Location: UCSB	Read your poem and it reminded me of something I wrote a while ago... When my family was living at the United Stated Air Force Base, in Wiesbaden, Germany, my father frequently flew on C-130’s to and from “training missions.” He was a radar technician, so flying to remote locations to provide technical support was not out of the ordinary. One day in late September 1996, he was coming home from a six-month mission. My mom and I were watching his plane come in with all the other families and then something strange happen. The plane was on approach to land when it suddenly broke-off its approach and started to climb. We thought that the plane had made a bad approach and was trying to make another runway approach. The plane circled around and made another attempt at landing, it failed to land this time too and we started to worry. After the third failure the plane went into a holding pattern; this is when we went to find the flight controller on duty. The flight controller, a close friend of the family, said that the plane was having difficulty with one of its landing gears, and it would have to land on three of its four landing gears. We had an opportunity to speak with him before the landing, and he said that he loved us very much. The plane landing was fine; until the landing gears caved-in under the plane’s weight, and the plane started skidding on the runway. The sparks looked horrible but everyone on-board was okay, except for my father. He suffered a compound fracture in both legs, the kind where the bone has broken in several places and pierced the skin. The damage in his legs was extensive, and he lost both of them in the hospital later that week, in a combination of hemorrhaging, gangrene and infection. This ended his career in the Air Force. He was given a medical discharge as a double-amputee, but he received a two-hundred dollar a week lifetime pension. He was never the same after the accident; all he did was lay in bed and think about ways to end his suffering. About a year or so after the accident he recovered from his depression and began to live his life again. This is when I was in sixth grade, and he started involving himself with my school. He came to all of my soccer games, and he was sitting in the aisle when I graduated to middle school. That summer I went to soccer camp to prepare for junior high soccer – my father killed himself that summer. I was told by an elderly neighbor that he went outside one Sunday morning before church, in full military uniform, saluted the flag and killed himself with his service pistol. They held a full military funeral for him, and we received a folded flag in the shape of a triangle. This is a lot like when author Tim O’Brien loses his Vietnam squad-mates in the book “The Things They Carried” – only his squad-mates weren’t real and neither is this story. Well sure, O’Brien served as a grunt in Vietnam and a lot of his friends died, but his book are written to tell an emotion – not to retell a story. My family did live on Wiesbaden Air Force Base for a year, and my father was a radar technician but that is where the truth ends. My father was never in a plane crash. He never lost his legs. He never committed suicide on Sunday morning. My father is 39, divorced from my mother, and he lives in southern Indiana. We rarely talk and it seems as though he is dead sometimes. Even though he isn’t dead, it is usually easier to pretend that he doesn’t exist, and his presumed “death” is a means to this end. Much like O’Brien’s writings for himself, writing this was a catharsis for me and a little bit of empathy practice for you. You got to work that “humane imagination” muscle and feel sorry for my family for a few minutes. And you might believe that this was a trite way to avoid telling a personal story but as O’Brien said "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”