4:29 a.m. - Saturday, Feb. 04, 2006
MsLeslie smells patchouli
I�m burning a stick of incense this morning. It�s in a small oblong wooden incense box that Ann bought for me on a whim not long ago. At this early morning hour, the smoke rises straight for a foot or more before curling away into the universe of my empty home. The smell of patchouli is sweet and spicy; A fragrance that will be remembered by anyone in my age group and will always bring remembrance of a world long since past. It�s the smell that defines the sixties.
Lately, I�ve begun burning incense on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes I do it just to savor it, but more and more, it�s becoming something like a prayer to me. Or more like a kind of private meditation. Watching the ember glow, the ash fall and the smoke rise helps me think. While it lasts, I can focus.
This morning, as I watch it burn, I am thinking many of the same thoughts that I have spent a lifetime thinking accidentally. The same thoughts I have tried to avoid whenever I see the sun through overhead leaves, hear a gunshot, smell root beer, drive under a memorial bridge, or even taste cold milk. I think the thoughts if I smell a hospital or see a soldier, and lately, I seem to think them whenever I drive through the devastation that is still Biloxi. There is, in fact, a seemingly endless list of things that trigger the thoughts and after fighting them for most of a lifetime, I have at last learned their name and have found the ability to accept them.. to just ride them out and keep on going as best I can.
The thoughts are of fear and death, of feeling helpless and hopeless and still pushing ahead to meet whatever destiny is there. They are thoughts of an eighteen year old being in infinite pain while looking at a blue sky and realizing that life is over before it�s begun. It�s the popcorn popping of small arms fire all around, and the screams of men in fear and in pain, and the sound of helicopter blades chopping through still air. And it�s grief over a life defined by fear and the guilt that comes from surviving; A life spent feeling that nothing is really very important after all.
Today is my true birthday. It�s the day that I stood in front of a bullet in a far away place. It�s the day in 1968 that my life as a veteran began.
I have relived the events of that day too many times. Re-telling them only ends in those tears and emotion best reserved for the quiet privacy of my therapist�s office. I won�t recount them here. It�s not fair to you and it�s too hard for me. Instead, I�ll just watch my incense and wait for the day to end.
Please do not write to sympathize with me or to thank me for a sacrifice I did not mean to give. Instead, write to tell me that you too have burned a piece of incense today. To do so will honor me, and if you take a minute today to say thanks to some young soldier in your life you will honor him�.. or her.
The incense is gone now, and with it go my thoughts. It�s not four-thirty yet. I still have the day to live, and so I�ll take my deep breath early, think happy thoughts, and get my hair done.
I always feel better with a new perm.
�
�
