Had it lasted just a bit longer

“It” here was the war, NAM.

My friend and I often chatted that had it lasted as its Afghan counterpart, we would have been long dead.

Our version of “It’s a Wonderful life”…we wouldn’t be around to affect changes, to do some damage or contribute to build others’ lives better.

The immediate next generation wouldn’t have known about our struggle and sentiment. Of calling today’s buffet foods – decades after the war – “Ft Chaffee” foods (one of the four refugees camps in the US in the second half of 1975, serving mess-hall style).

Like a line in “I don’t want to talk about it”…”If I stayed here just a little bit longer…won’t you listen…to my heart…oh my heart”.

We men wanted to get it over (even death)…Prolonging the struggle, the protracted conflict, the elasticity of limping through a field of unexploded ordinances… then the Killing Fields; all undesirable.

I have seen those skulls up close.

How could people got in line, stoically, for mass execution under the Khmer Rouge?

No resistance? No jumping out of the tower of inferno like the Falling Man on 9/11? No rushing the terrorists like one of my alumni on UA 93?

We would rather die right then and there.

But then, we wouldn’t experience first-hand decades of both pain and pleasure…What it feels like to be rejected, to fail and to compromise.

To see the depth of depravity and deception.

To know the kindness of strangers (letting me lay on his hotel’s floor to pass a cold North East Winter night).

Had it lasted just a bit longer….We would exist only in faint memory of loved ones, in Black/White altar photo.

Occasionally, or annually, in the background of incense smokes and fruits that last a while, like apples and pears.

Had it lasted just a bit longer, we wouldn’t endure the stagflation, inflation and deflation in the US. To cheer and to cry, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Fall of the Twin Towers.

We wouldn’t receive scholarships or offer it to the next generation.

We wouldn’t pass it on ( kindness and cruelty – human’s mix bag of genes).

We wouldn’t be able to cheer others on, to comment or complain.

TO EXIST is a privilege.

And we have been mighty lucky that NAM, the war, stopped when it did as we skidded right into the thick of it.

I used to feel betrayed, angry and imploding. But of late, I realise how lucky we (my friends and I) have been to breathe free air, and speak freely.

Had it lasted just a bit longer…we would have been war invalids, war veterans or war dead, without a proper burial and remembrance.

Now, it’s our Afghan neighbour’s turn…to appreciate what they cannot see at this moment, as their war will soon be ended.

Everything has their beginning and ending: a story, a song or a war. Ours happen to be all three….”oh my heart:”…