Remembering Shorty

Twenty years ago today I was marking the day before as one day further away from a very deep hole....then the phone rang. At the other end was the sister of someone who I had shared that hole with for the previous ten years, and all she said was, “Shorty's gone.” For those few seconds that it took to process what she meant, so much flashed through my mind. It was another turning point in my life of which there have been many. Safe to say there is at least one book that could be written about those ten years Shorty and I share the dark space, and quite another book be written about these past twenty years. But without those ten years, these past twenty would tell quite a different tale. We were partners, and I will never leave him behind.

He is buried at Ft. Logan National Cemetery. At 18 he joined the United States Army with one goal, to be Airborne infantryman. From 1967-1973 he did three tours of duty in Vietnam earning five Purple Hearts along with some other miscellaneous medal. In all he gave this country 21 years of his life wearing the Army uniform of this country. These few words say little about who he was and what he could have been, had we had a little more time. The true cost of war is immeasurable. I fucking hate war.