9:58 AM Mon, Dec 17, 2007 | Permalink
Scott Kesterson
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Souvenirs and Tokens: the reality of consequence...
As I sat at my desk, I opened the email that had been sent to me from a soldier that I had come to know over the course of the fifteen months I was embedded. In it he wrote, "The thing that scares me the most is that the war will be over and there will be no place for me at all." His words were a snapshot of a generation of people who have been forever changed and who will never be able to view this place they call home the same way again, "I forgot how much I don’t fit in here." This soldier had served three tours and was now preparing for a fourth.
Wars are not so much forgotten as misunderstood. The change that war brings to those that walk within its shadow is, at first, only recognized by those who wait anxiously for their loved one's return. It is a collision of two worlds, a supper alone with the kids and a loved one five-thousand miles away finding the other in the scent of a letter. War is the slayer of innocence, a giver of dark dreams with an impact on life just shy of death itself. War becomes the undeclared mistress whose embrace we never fully escape.
War could be reduced to the experience of moments; a series of "tomorrows" disappearing as if waking from a dream. Our lives in war are shaped by a culture where death becomes a vanishing point on the horizon, replacing our mortality with the promise of eternal life through honor and bravery. Yet, our lives are not defined by futures unwritten, or the accumulation of wealth, but by the lasting relationships and respect that we forge over the span of years we call, "life."
Those that pass through its portal, discover that war never allows us to return. Instead, we are left with the echos of emotions that chews our guts. War is intoxicating within its vortex of pain. It nurtures us like an orphan on the street. War is the elixir that reveals our common roots in humanity.
In quiet hours of self-reflection, in the aftermath of its wake, war leaves us without refuge. Life in the safety of home presents the challenge of offering the same meaning and purpose that forms every breath in war. War tugs at our soul even from the comfort of distant soil. War beckons with a call from extended hand, wanting us back.
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Copyright 2007, Scott Kesterson
Wow, there is some good writing in this blog. You speak the truth.