Sharing in family’s sorrow was gift of kindness after war loss

<p>Jesus’ words to turn the other cheek when we’re struck are hard to put into practice. No one wants to look like a coward, and the urge to retaliate seems bred in our bones.</p><p>The one time I was hit and didn’t want to hit back occurred nearly 40 years ago, and I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. Everything about the moment was odd. First, the setting was not where anyone would expect to be struck, that setting being the foyer of a church.</p><p>Second, the person who struck me, and struck me hard, was a man a generation older than me. He was, in fact, the father of two of my childhood friends.</p><p>Third, the words he uttered in anger were the oddest part. He said, “How dare you get so old.”</p><p>Four, those who witnessed the odd scene responded as I did. They gasped before quickly looking away. Everyone wanted to pretend they hadn’t seen what just occurred.</p><p>Please don’t think I refrained from striking the man back because of Jesus’ words. No, that wasn’t the reason, although I think Jesus was present in that moment. I didn’t strike back for the same reason that everyone who witnessed that moment turned away. The key to understanding what happened, the insight that explains everything, is sorrow, the kind of sorrow that doesn’t fade with time.</p><p>Steve and Jim were brothers who, despite coming from the same loving family, took very different paths as teenagers. Steve was physically awkward and gawky, while Jim was athletic and handsome. In high school, Steve would occasionally be wild, while Jim, several years behind him, was almost always wild. Steve hung out with friends from church, like me, while Jim hung out with guys who enjoyed thumbing their noses at authority. They didn’t just cut class but would sit in the high school parking lot and drink.</p><p>After high school, Steve enlisted in the Navy to learn a trade. There he ended up as a cook on one of the ships off the coast of South Vietnam. Jim chose a different path after high school, enlisting in the Marine Corp and ending up in the heat of combat.</p><p>About the same time, my parents moved away from the town, and I was safely in college. Consequently, I didn’t hear the tragic story until after everything was over — the knock on the door of the family’s home, the story in the paper, and the funeral.</p><p>What happened to Jim and Steve was meant to be a reprieve from the war. Because they were brothers, it was arranged for Jim to be helicoptered out to the ship where Steve was serving. There, the two brothers were able to spend a few hours together. I have no idea what the brothers talked about, but I suspect that Jim shared harrowing stories of combat. I like to think that Steve made Jim his favorite meal.</p><p>I learned later that Steve was standing on the deck of the ship, waving to his brother as the helicopter took off. Then something went terribly wrong, and the helicopter plunged into the water not far from Steve’s ship. No one survived the crash.</p><p>Ten years later, I revisited the church of my childhood. I’d graduated from college, seminary and had just recently returned to the States from my doctoral work overseas. My future looked bright. I returned to the town and was invited by the youth pastor of my own high school years to attend a concert at the church. As we sat together in the front row of the balcony, I looked down on my past, as represented by families dear to me from my childhood.</p><p>When the concert ended, people stopped me in the foyer of the church to say nice things. More than one laughed about the grey starting to take over my hair. That was when someone off to the side hit me hard on my upper arm. I turned to see the red and angry face of Steve and Jim’s father and heard those words, “How dare you get so old.”</p><p>I can’t remember exactly what happened next, other than no one did anything for a long moment. I think Steve, ever the joker, stepped in and did his best to redirect the conversation.</p><p>But I know now what happened that day. In the father’s mind, Jim would always be young and so also, in his mind, would all of Jim’s childhood friends. But I, with my greying hair, had returned to town and destroyed that picture. By living to be 30 years old, I was a reminder to Jim’s father that Jim would never live to 30. By aging and moving into my future, I was leaving behind what this father could never leave behind.</p><p>As I write this column now 40 years later and in the shadow of Memorial Day, I can still feel where the father hit me. For many families, Memorial Day will be a day of picnics and auto races. But for so many other families, this is a day of sorrow.</p><p>I know now, as I didn’t fully understand then, that taking that blow and accepting a small bit of that father’s sorrow was the kindest thing I could have done.</p>