It was Christmas morning, and I was home from college. It was early - the sky hadn't even softened to a navy blue yet, but I heard the coffee maker spurting out its 10,387th pot of coffee and I made my way to the kitchen, knowing my dad would be sitting at the breakfast bar, sipping his black coffee from his favorite coffee mug.
As always, my dad teased me as I laced my own coffee with milk and sugar (because otherwise, gross) and we began to talk. And somehow, among the ins and outs of our chat, my dad told me how, as a paratrooper during the Vietnam War, he had been a member of both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Division. It was something I hadn't known - because he had never mentioned it.
Dad didn't "do" war stories. He might tell you about the monkey they found in the jungle and adopted, naming it Charlie (and I was probably in my 20s before I got that particular joke) and giving it beer, or the time he went to Japan on R and R. He'd tell you about boxing, maybe, and how he once went to fight wearing nothing but his helmet and his underwear when the siren went off in the middle of the night, but it was a funny story, not a "war" story.
But other than that, the only thing he would really say about being a paratrooper during the Vietnam War was that anyone who wasn't scared the first time they jumped and wasn't scared the last time they jumped was either crazy or a liar.
That morning marked the first time I really understood that this man, compact and gentle, sweet and reserved, had been in combat. That he had undoubtedly seen and done things that I would never be able to comprehend, that he had fought, had feared for his life, I'm sure, and seen good men die.
It was hard for me to reconcile the two. Dad and hero. Dad and dude who jumped out of planes in the middle of a jungle while people tried to shoot him out of the sky.
But Dad wasn't welcomed as a hero when he came home. So, as a young man, angry, certainly, perhaps disillusioned, my father stood on Virginia Beach and began throwing his medals and ribbons into the Atlantic Ocean, flinging them far into the waves. And he came back to Smithville where he saw a girl with long black hair in a mini-skirt, her car broken down on the side of the road, and he married her and they had four children and lived a life.
Before my father died, he contacted the Veterans Administration and requested copies of all his service medals and ribbons - you can do that once, if you are a veteran. The package came several months after he died.
My dad had a lot of medals.
There is one particular morning, taking my dad to his radiation, that I will never forget. It was cold, but bright - the way it gets, sometimes, in the mornings in Missouri in the middle of winter. The kind of morning where the air is sharp and clean and almost painful to breath, and all the trees, bare of leaves, stand sharply limned against the rising sun, which colors the cold sky pink and orange and purple.
And my dad, terminally ill, his strength fading, he started to sing in my car.
"Good morning, America, how are you? Don't you know me, I'm your native son," he sang softly, and I struggled not to cry, because I knew he was simply appreciating the beauty of the morning even knowing his mornings were limited, and I didn't want to ruin it for him.
My dad, native son that he was, died because of his service to his country, from a cancer directly related to his time in Vietnam. Even the United States Army admits it. And so, at his funeral, he was granted military honors and my brother-in-law, who is also a soldier, performed the flag-folding ceremony and presented my mother with the precisely folded triangle of cloth, a triangle of cloth that I swear to you must weigh a thousand pounds, saying, as he did so, "This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."
And even as my heart literally felt like it was breaking - I mean, it was a physical pain in my chest, an ache, like my heart was a fist that had clenched too tight and cramped - I was reminded that my dad was a true patriot.
And Memorial Day, it's a day devoted to true patriots, right? And those of us who have never served, we can't comprehend what service men and women and combat veterans have gone through, the bravery they exhibit, the type of courage and dedication and love of country it takes to literally sign a chunk of your life away, knowing you may not actually get that life back at all. And so we fly our flags, instead, and loudly bless the troops and maybe attend a ceremony, and tell people to remember that this particular day is not all about camping and barbecue.
My dad was a master at the barbecue.
With a can on Busch, a platter of meat and his old-school charcoal Weber, my dad was king of the universe. Do you barbecue well? My dad was better. In fact, to this day, I can't watch anyone grilling anything without raising my eyebrows slightly and thinking, to myself, "Well, that's not how Jack Palmer would have done it."
He barbecued on Fridays. On long weekends. In the winter. And he certainly barbecued on Memorial Day.
And tomorrow, weather permitting, we will be barbecuing. Because it's what my dad would have wanted. Because if he was here, it's exactly what he would be doing, and he would happily wave at any neighbors who happened to be doing the same. Because, even though I am crying as I write this, tomorrow I'll honor my dad with hot dogs and hamburgers and by letting his grandson run around barefoot in the yard dressed in red, white and blue with the stupid little champagne poppers I got him at Walmart and enjoying the day in a stereotypical, small-town America fashion. Maybe humming "Good morning, America, how are you?" under my breath as I bring my husband, another veteran, a can of beer as he barbecues. And I am not going to feel badly about any of it.
And you shouldn't either.
Because honoring isn't always about grief. Sometimes it's about celebration.
