Weeping - Part I

I had intended to comment on Professor Juan Cole's most recent post which yanked the tears out of my eye sockets this morning. What follows emerged, Rip Van Winkle-like from the slumbers of the heart instead.


My uncle, 1st Lt James Raymond Hockett, 25ID, the Stryker Brigade, was mortally wounded near Tay Ninh, South Vietnam, and died 22 September, 1968. I was a high school senior, a melodramatic, sensitive youth with an overly active imagination, with a foreboding sense that the arc of my life line was about to take dramatic turns - to Vietnam, to combat, and to death, like my Uncle Jim, a large looming figure in my life while he lived, and perhaps larger looming after he died.


Of Grandma Verna's 14 grand children, nine were boys. Over summers Blue Island, IL, visiting Grandma Verna and Grandpa Dale, Uncle Jim would take us across Western Avenue to the wild fields where the monarch butterflies flew, so many 1,000's of them. Jim was a born soldier. He taught us military maneuvers, marching, of course, but most of us were in band, so we got that right. Crawling on our bellies, trying to keep our butts below the grass line. Shooting BB guns. We had walkie-talkies. The Hazelcrest Police Department was on the same frequency as our walkie talkies. They wanted to know our location. We were trained to know when to go radio silent.


Uncle Jim volunteered nights in the emergency ward of St. Francis Hospital during his high school days. He played 1st clarinet in the band, and met his future bride, Louise Walker, also a 1st clarinetist, from Glen Ellyn, IL. at a band clinic at Northwestern University. She was attracted to this sensitive boy, who played the clarinet, and wrote poetry.


Jim attended Western Illinois University, my father's alma mater, on the my father's advice, declaring pre-med. Realizing he was in over his head, he withdrew after his freshman year, and enlisted in the army. He hoped to go to OCS, but was told that without the college degree, he was unqualified. He was promoted quickly to sergeant, sent to Vietnam, engaged in combat. He wrote lots of letters, although over time we heard from him less frequently.


After his commitment was up, he planned to leave the service. But things had changed (excalation) and the Army offered to send him to Fort Bragg for officer training. He reenlisted. Jim's class graduated over 1,000 lieutenants, all but three sent directly to Vietnam. Jim was one of the lucky three. Grandma Verna and Grandpa Dale were so happy. Their prayers had been answered. Jim, with the benefit of combat experience, would train OCS candidates. We believed that he was out of harm's way.


Jim probably knew better. I remember how much weight he gained stateside, so obvious from the family album photos, wearing shorts. His calves, thighs, and face so thick, like mine now are. One does not put back on that much weight unless hungering for something food cannot fulfill.


He returned to Vietnam, to fight for the Vietnamese children. For all I know, he might have volunteered. His second tour was abbreviated, just one month and nine days after its start he was killed.


I found a letter my mom wrote about how her parents seemed to wither afterwards. Of course they would, they had lost a great part of themselves. I remember his funeral service. It was a closed casket. Grandma Verna was never convinced he had died.


His funeral, even for a 17-year old melodramatic, sensitive youth with an overly active imagination was most solemn. I remember so well asking myself why was I the only one not weeping?


A curious thing, tears now streaming down my face, my throat lumpy and dust dry. Eventually, I did cry, just as I now am crying for all our soldiers, sailors, airmen and their families. Just like from time to time, I cry for the friends and family of Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger.


I first cried for Jim, while returning by cab from a tavern, hammered to the nails, to my folks' place. This was winter, 1983. I had left my girl friend SBG to live near LMS, Tinker Belle to my Peter Pan. I fell for LMS in Psych 101 at WIU. Tinker Belle was from Glen Elleyn, like my Aunt Louise and this no doubt explains some of my enduring attraction.


Such an eventful time. I left a wonderful woman after six years together, my apartment was robbed, I quit my job, and two minutes after submitting my resignation, I got the call Grandma Verna had died in the hospital. I had promised to visit her that evening to tell the hospital to release her. She badly wanted to leave. She was admitted for a broken hip, but died from other causes.


Alcohol is the great truth serum, and a drunk who wants to talk, knows EXACTLY what he needs to talk about. Started talking to the cab driver about my Uncle Jim, and my fears of going to Vietnam, fears that I would be a coward in combat, and not die like a man. Fears that I would be a disgrace to my Uncle Jim. Never been in a fight. Have gone to great lengths to keep my high school buddies from fighting at away football games. I have a flair for self-deprecation and public shaming. I can arouse people to peals of laughter, usually, AT me. How was I to understand they WANTED to get into a fist fight?


My physical cowardice. One time, while catching a quick cocktail on break across the street from Bankers Life & Casualty, I was with two other guys and two gals. An angry working man came to our table, and demanded to know who had called him a hillbilly. Honesty is the best policy. "Nobody at this table called anybody any names, sir," I answered. The gals started giggling. Indeed, nobody had, and amongst that group, nobody would. The guys finished our cocktails, left money on the table, stood up, and walked deliberately, but with trepidation, out the door. Not one fighter amid that group of white, suburban, male, actuarial students. The gals ordered another cockgtail. Sheesh, WTF was THAT all about?


After work, we returned to the bar, but sat in the dining area, JUST IN CASE. Marianne, the waitress took our orders. She told me, "that was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do." I assured her, it was not bravery, but abject, trembling, terror. Knowing what I know now, I should have invited Marianne to dinner after her shift. I was between girl friends at the time.


Back to the drunken cab ride to my folks' house. The cab driver was one damn fine listener. I confessed my physical cowardice, offering a reasonable, true, excuse. When my siblings and I were growing up, my father taught us to NEVER fight. My father is in the Western Illinois University Athletic Hall of Fame, having lettered in four different sports: football, wrestling (which he also coached), boxing and golf. He had fought through grade school, junior high, high school and college, in self defense. We lived in a rural community where he taught high school mathematics and eventually became the varsity coach for wrestling and golf. By the time we were old enough to learn verbal lessons, he knew full well that any fighting that occurred in that town was about mutual agreement, and not self defense.


An epiphany: I vas only following my father's orders. But in little league, I obsessed with my fear of being hit by a pitched ball, and tried to simulate the feeling, welting my arm with green apples for practice. Although afraid to take a full swing, I could bunt, having read Ty Cobb's My Life in Baseball, The True Story, and for what seems like idiot reasons now, was fearless about squaring myself 90 degrees to the mound and laying a lag bunt down either the first base or third base lines. When I finally did get hit, I almost fell down laughing. It hadn't hurt one bit.


I wasn't a coward. I simply knew not how to fight, and, in the army, in Vietnam, that would not have mattered, for I had looked into my soul, and understood: fighter, no; killer, yes. I could face my Uncle Jim's spirit. I broke down sobbing for his loss, but also, in gratitude. I had conceived of a narrative that allowed me to forgive myself.


post script: I met a homeless Vietnam tunnel rat, Eddie, at a 6:00 a.m. bar on Western Avenue in Chicago. I was headed to Arkansas to help bury Grandma Verna. With no job, lots of cash, no girl friends, looked good, except the part about never sleeping more than an hour or two at my Chicago apartment, even then, I slept with a sand wedge in my hand, ready to beat any intruder to death.


I saw a synergistic opportunity. "Eddie," I said, "I need a favor. Do you think you can help me out?"


"What's that?" he asked


"I'm going to travel for a while, and I need somebody to look after my apartment while I'm gone, to get the mail, things like that. But you need to know, it was robbed a few weeks ago."


He agreed to help me out. En route from the bar, Eddie said, "I don't know anything about you. I don't know if you're a homo or what."


"I'm not a homosexual, Eddie. My brother is, however."


"But man, this is really going to help me out. Do you maybe have ten bucks?"


When we arrived, I opened the door. He looked around, almost dazzled, as if he had gone to heaven. "This is a really nice place" he said. He'd been sleeping in alleyways and in doorways.


I gave him a $20. "You'll need this for food Eddie." He asked if his homeless cousin could stay too. "Sure thing Eddie."


"If they come back and break into the place, is it okay to kill 'em?" he asked.


"It sure is Eddie."


"With a knife?"


"You bet."


And so, from February through August, Eddie and his cousin stayed at the apartment. I paid the rent and the utilities. Never had a phone. I'd visit about once a month, appearing in the afternoon to find a convenient time to talk, have some food. Eddie always cooked a good dinner. Sometimes he'd "borrow" money for food; other times he had the money. He hated to ask, but he wanted to put out a good spread for me and my new girlfriend.


So, why did I trust a homeless Vietnam vet with the keys to the apartment I was no longer going to use? Well, he was a drunk, in need of confession. The same kind of drunk in need of confession I had been, a few weeks earlier in a cab.


"Did you ever kill women and children, Mark?" Eddie had asked me.


"No Eddie, never did."


"I did. My wife and two baby sons died in a car accident. I was driving."


I took his confession, and, like the cab driver did for me, I was able to offer exactly what he needed, at the precise moment when he most needed it -- shelter and self-forgiveness.


Eddie SAW the miraculous and divine earthly manifestations of the God of Forgiveness, the God of Love, and so did I.


I didn't go to Vietnam. I will never know what I would have done there.


But I do know that I was HERE for a soldier, for a brother in need, and I gave him shelter. I covered his back.


Bring our troops home NOW, for the love of God.




All praise to you, oh Lord.
For the path upon which You lead and guide us
For the opportunities You give us
to do good in Your world
and for Your Forgiveness.