A Memoir: The Short Version

I am an erstwhile economist, a troubled essayist, a probing poet, a self-declared philosopher, and an aspiring humanist with no political affiliations or desires to join any political party. I write because an inner voice tells me to do so. I do not profess to have studied poetry in any formal sense, and I know I am not in the same league with those who excel at this craft. Still, I enjoy trying to find words that express a sentiment and in writing the best poetry that is within my limited skills. Nearly 1 million readers have visited my web pages, and several thousand of them have left reviews of my work. Their numbers and their encouragement have exceeded all my expectations. I sincerely hope you find something worthwhile in this composition that I call a memoir.

First, I dislike using the first person singular in my writing. So this will be a difficult task from the start. Originally, I was part of a family of 8. It fell apart quickly when my mom died. Today, all are gone but me. My mom died when I was but 5 years old. I grew up in poverty. My father was afflicted with the disease of alcoholism, so I didn’t understand my low place in society until I was placed in an orphanage. There the walls closed in on me, and I have yet to extricate myself from the nearness and the hollowness of those walls that never cease to echo their interminable empty sounds. After 8 years there and 6 more living with my father while watching him die from a wretched existence, my soul ached with despair, I learned to hate always being in last place no matter where I was or what was expected from me. I have since rationalized that this burden was mine to bear because of my wayward life in a prior existence. My task has been to deal with it whether I overcame it or not. That is an axiom of life from the point of view of Spiritism and reincarnation. Whether that belief is right or wrong makes no difference. It has yanked me up almost every time a fell into a deep funk.

Today, I know there are no personal achievements in my life worthy of putting on display. Money, wealth, and fame are but fleeting moments to be savored and then filed away. There are goals that lift me, trust that smooths my way from time to time, and love that brings me a lot of clarity. Beyond those virtues and outcomes, life to me is full of challenges that can never be fulfilled. Another one always awaits me. I call upon the wisdom of Rudyard Kipling to help get me through the tough times:

 If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise...

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

No sermon from any speaker ever lifted me up like his message. I know that I am treading on sacred grounds when I read similar words committed to pen and paper. It took me much longer than other mortals to come to this realization: We commit our best thoughts to writing. That wait was worth the payoff.

I enlisted in the Armed Forces almost in desperation. I knew I needed a reliable source of food and a bed in order to find my footing in life. It worked. But I needed more. A lot more. Still, I learned about myself and others. I wasn’t especially fond of either. But I rose up in the ranks and became good at my craft. Although I learned how to help get an aircraft or a missile to its target anywhere in the world, and blow that target into radioactive dust, I also had to learn separately that 10, or 30, or 100 million human beings might also die the more effort I put into my work. And I was good at what I did. Still, I did not engage the “enemy” in hand-to-hand combat, so I was a killer from a distance. And so were Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Henry Kissinger. All engaged in wars they did not know how to fight or to win. But the grave does not dismiss or forgive their involvement, nor mine. That is my belief.

Wars teach us different lessons. Estimates vary, but reliable sources state that 2 million civilians and 1.1 million Vietnamese soldiers died in the Vietnam war. I do not know what percentage of those deaths lay at the feet of the three men mentioned. My estimate is that 300,000 died as the result of efforts from aircraft systems that were within my scope of responsibility. On a shared basis, I estimate that I contributed to 37,500 deaths. I write those numbers with humility and anguish. Passing any of them off as “collateral” damage fails my value system. I am certain that no-one seeks to offend when they say “thank you for your military service,” but the families of 37,500 Vietnamese might have a different greeting for me and for the rest of us who participated in that war that was once justified by a North Vietnam PT boat attack on the USS Mattox in the Gulf of Tonkin—that never happened. Yes, I dare not “look too good nor talk too wise.”

I was doomed to failure in most of the ventures in my life. Opportunities knocked, and I answered them. But answering does not assure success thereafter. So who is to blame? I haven’t the temerity to blame others because I “hop-scotched” from one opportunity to another without giving myself and those around me the chance to find workable arrangements for our mutual survival. A psychological profile once showed that I lacked “interpersonal skills” in my dealings with others. I went in to discuss my shortcomings with a psychologist. This arrangement failed almost instantly when he tried to assure me that he was a professional with a lot of answers—that would take years to analyze and correct. A second psychologist was quite empathetic to the travails from my early years. She also seemed to like my “rugged individualism.” I did not know who to blame when I realized she had amorous intentions. But I moved on.

My two daughters are very different from me, with different challenges, and different successes. I love them both—equally. Still, they have neither walked a mile in my shoes, nor would I wish that set of circumstances on them. And so, there is a distance between us that cannot be bridged. It is a bridge too far that requires me to have conquered my past, and myself. One is difficult; together they are impossible.

So here I am in the last stage of my life. I have 47 followers on AuthorsDen that I love unconditionally. Yet I have never met one of you. Perhaps that is why I love you all with such fervor. We never interact by sight, sound, hearing, touch, or smell. I might need a private jet, lots of money, a passport to the world, and a huge capacity for drinking, dining, and having fun. I would certainly be willing to “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty second’s worth of distance run.” I doubt if that would make me a man, but it wouldn’t take a magic carpet in order for me to give it a try.