I watched a video of an old friend’s memorial today and it reminded me of how easy it is to get caught up in trivial shit, to make problems where none exist, or where issues that are personally irrelevant appear to have meaning.
When I was on active duty I had a daily litmus test, friends or friends of friends were out there risking their lives every day, and every so often — with greater frequency than is possible to integrate — they didn’t come back. And that kept me clear, living honestly, in a relationship with what mattered instead of being overly-influenced by things that didn’t.
These days I don’t have that test so when something, a reminder, does come along to shake my tree and wake me, it does so like a hammer, bringing all of the old memories with it. I cry. I shake. I cannot sleep. Yes, I cry for lost friends and loved ones but I also cry over all of the time I waste on shit that simply DOES NOT MATTER.
When our needs are taken care of, when we don’t have to fight to exist, we create problems to solve (or unsolvable ones that guarantee we remain eternally occupied). One might say that grappling or fighting, while being recreational, does the same thing. I had never thought of it as such but it is, and yet, it teaches universally applicable and important lessons that trivial, made-up problems do not — and if they did we would be living in a very, very different world.
Pretending to value life is different than truly doing so. And by pretending, I mean, to speak words and repeat slogans, and march, and shout in place of (as surrogates for) actually having lost something of dear, dear value, something or someone whose loss utterly changes the landscape of one’s life, and of many other lives.
After SFC Lowe died in 2016 many lives were irrevocably changed; he was our inspiration, the brightest burning flame, a marker of human potential, of who we might become — as Soldiers, and men. At his memorial, Jenny, his wife displayed a painted image wherein Tim appeared as the constellation of a bear, below which, earthbound, she and her cubs made their way forward through a landscape that would never be the same.
It wasn’t long after when I experienced my most person loss with SSG Travis. I still feel and witness his effect upon the world, upon the people he loved and who loved him, those of us he rescued in those mountains and those he (still) saves and guides daily with the example he set, and how fiercely he loved. His wake washes over them, and travels, crashing against distant, unseen shores.
I don’t want to imply that one loss is more important than another, that is not the point. I mean only to say that when loss hits close to home, when you cannot sleep or breathe or eat because of it, when you wished you had died in someone’s stead, it carries weight that distant, impersonal loss or injury or mistreatment does not.
I would love to care more about things that happen to people and peoples I do not know, who live across oceans, in different cultures, speaking different languages and influenced by different histories, but I don’t. What affects me is the blood splashed on my hands, the individuals who were here and then suddenly not. Mentors, partners, friends, lovers, acquaintances who were more than that because they also did the activity I did and formed a close-knit circle to keep doing it on the fringes of society. My group is small and always has been. We did a thing that kept us separate, marginalized, and made us circle our wagons. We spoke our own language.
So when any single one of us dies the effect on the whole is weight, is a wave, and we sometimes find ourselves drowning.
