Happy Birthday, Dave

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1945. I was born in March, while the world was involved in a war that was fought on three continents and countless islands in the Pacific ocean. My country played a major role in the war, a role brought upon by the way we were thrust into it. It was to end with nuclear weapons, bringing a new level of devastation and horror to the planet, but I was unaware, concerned only with food and being loved. I was unable to communicate, dependent for everything on those around me, and my needs were taken care of mostly by my mother.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1953. I was eight years old, in elementary school, learning the basic building blocks of the skills I would need in the adult world. Mathematics, History, Language, I enjoyed them all, and soaked up the information imparted to me like a thirsty sponge soaked up water. My country was involved in another war, or a “police action” as it was called, but America was involved in fighting to maintain and sustain the freedom of the people of South Korea. It was mentioned on the television news once in a while, but I was eight years old and wrapped up in living, so it was only a passing issue to me. I was learning more about the world, from the perspective of what was close.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1963. I was eighteen years old, a high school graduate, in boot camp, and someone in Dallas had murdered my Commander-in-Chief, blowing pieces of his skull and brains onto the trunk of a car. We were supporting a country called South Viet Nam, but we were not heavily involved there. Not that it mattered to me. I was involved in trying to keep a very large, very ugly Sergeant happy, a task that took all of my time and the time of all of my compatriots. I was learning still, this time how to make a bed, wash several thousand dishes, and kill my fellow man effectively and efficiently, without getting killed myself in the process.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1968. I was twenty-three years old (going on ten thousand) back in the United States from a two year sojourn in the jungles of Southeast Asia. I had learned things about myself that I never had dreamed were possible, and I’d developed skills that I had never expected to learn. Things like booby traps, C-4, role camouflage, air support, and insertion/extraction were second nature. My country had fought a battle called Tet, and the forces we fought had been defeated in every encounter. We were winning a war, but things were changing. My country wasn’t supporting its people, its soldiers, and I was treated like scum when I got back.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1972. I was twenty-seven years old. We had landed a man on the moon three years ago, and I was married. A wife and five children thrust me into a learning program as intense as any I had ever been subjected to, and I developed new skills and coping abilities. My country was nearing the end of the war in the Nam, and I still wore her uniform, wondering if I would go back to that place again before the whole thing was over. There were changes occurring all around me, as I watched my government losing its backbone, the news media become the opinion media, and John Kennedy’s words, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” had become forgotten while greed and begging for handouts from the government became commonplace.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year was 1999. I was fifty-four years old. I was out of the military now, and had six children grown with grandchildren appearing at regular intervals. One son had died, another was a career soldier, I’d added a college degree to my education, and I had spent eight years working for the state of Texas, caring for severely/profoundly mentally retarded persons. The last three years at the job, I was a QMRP (Qualified Mental Retardation Professional), in charge of every aspect of life for thirty profoundly retarded young women. I’d left the job for many reasons, but I’ll never forget the lessons taught to me by those people. One of these was never to judge these people by what they did, help then to learn all they could do. Many were helpless, unable to provide the most basic services for themselves. We fed them, bathed then, dressed and undressed them, even changed them. All done with love and concern.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

The year is 2005. On March 18, 2005, on my sixtieth birthday, a woman was murdered by the state in which she lived, for the crime of being inconvenient. And, as events unfolded, Federal judges, called into the fight by legislation, in an attempt to save her life, concurred, and the lengthy process of murder went on. Not death by hanging, or a bullet, or the electric chair, or even lethal injection. A far more lengthy and painful process began, the process of starvation and dehydration. And my country died a little more today. I wonder how much longer I’ll live? I had a heart attack in February, 2005. Medication, Rehabilitation exercises, three stents, a balloon angioplasty, diet changes…..

Will I live to be seventy? Eighty? Ninety?

Or only until I become inconvenient?

Like Terri Schiavo………

NOTE: Copyright 03/23/05 by Dave Hoffman

Use granted to all who identify author.