michael ramos

Hearsay

 (Note: When you see _____ insert the name of a vet you know or at least someone you care about)

Only the dead have seen the end of war, Plato says. At least we think so. Because like so many things about war, we only heard about it. We heard it from a guy who knew a guy, who knew the guy whose friend knew the guy that knew the guy who heard it first.

Like when we heard about _______ who killed himself. We weren’t there, but we found out from a Marine who heard it from another Marine who saw it on the news. So we’re left to wonder. Had he had enough? Did he want to see the end of war? Or was he just tired? 

Because they always call you in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping after telling you to go back to your barracks room, or your wife and child. Take a few days to relax before this pump, they always say. Our window isn’t for a few days they say, but you’ve deployed before and you know the game, but you go home anyway because what the hell else are you gonna do? So you go home and look at the sea bag in the corner, take your wife out to dinner and neither of you speak and neither of you taste anything and then maybe you fight because it’s easier to say goodbye that way and then at night the phone rings and get up they say, we’re leaving, be on the grinder at zero dark thirty.

You can never really sleep after a phone call like that. So you show up with your gear and put your green sea bag in a row and put your pack in a row and then get in formation and march to the armory to stand in line and laugh and joke and curse because you are there fifteen minutes prior to fifteen minutes prior to fifteen fucking minutes prior and the armory isn’t  even open yet, and your flak is heavy and the strap to your Kevlar is twisted on your plate carrier and your gear gets heavier and you’re standing in line and then you have your weapon and your pointy green-tipped bullets and you march back to the grinder and your toddler son tries to grab your Ka-bar bayonet and he thinks it’s cool that you have a bayonet and rifle and pistol and you hope he never has to do this but in the future he will tell you he wants to enlist like you did but before all that you get on the buses that sit for an hour as your family looks at you at the edge of the grinder and you kind of wish they would just leave so you could just leave and then you go and wait some more and then you go and come back.

And you can never really fall asleep after a deployment like that so maybe ______ was just tired and that’s why he killed himself. But before he kills himself he gets out and says I’m going to go to school on the Post 9/11 GI Bill and make a life for myself because haven’t I earned it?

Only no one at TAPS told him how hard it would be. Sure, they thanked him for his service and taught him how to dress for a job interview and told him to say please and thank you and quit saying fuck so much but they didn’t tell him how much America had changed, why would they tell an American that America was different, didn’t he live here? They didn’t tell him how much he had changed, they only told him to take off his uniform and forget about the past, who he was, and try to get some rest, transition they say, only he can’t forget his past and he isn’t even sure he wants to and he can’t get some rest but he goes to bed and wakes and goes to class. And he gets more and more tired. 

But he isn’t ever really thinking about killing himself, just how tired he is. Tired of transition, tired of school, tired of being unemployed, tired of not having any money because Congress changed the terms of the Post 9/11 GI Bill and so he only has eight dollars left in his checking account since he is unemployed and when he called the prior service recruiter so he could go home and get some rest they said thanks but no thanks, you’re old and broken and we don’t want tattooed combat vets we want young fresh recruits and he isn’t sure how to feed his wife and kids or pay his bills all of which means he is failing as a man and failure isn’t good because failure in his world means death. But we don’t fail, we adapt, we improvise, we overcome. But you aren’t transitioning and they keep saying transition but you can’t so it’s you not them and you know that failing means death, but you don’t want to die, you just want some rest but you can never really rest after that time you almost got shot in the face, or that time you thought you’d gotten shot in the head but it was just a Comm battery knocking you unconscious, or that time that Rookie got killed, or Sergeant Major but you can’t think like that because that’s how you try to kill yourself.

So instead of killing himself he gets counseling at the VA and they ask him why he’s there and they want to talk about stuff he’d rather not talk about it which is dumb that they ask because everyone is always telling him to move forward—but they always want to bring up all that old shit—and he’s trying to move forward but it’s just not working, and school is going well, but he and his wife just aren’t. And the VA doc asks him if he is feeling guilt and shame for what he has done for his country and he says don’t be stupid he didn’t do it for his country he did it for the guy on his left and right and he’s a warrior why would he feel shame, but this isn’t the first time he’s heard that so maybe yeah it is a little bit of shame and guilt, it had just never occurred to him and he leaves and gets lots of VA drugs in the mail, enough to drug a whole city and he’s forgotten who he is, that he is a warrior, because he only was a warrior because everyone told him was not is and now he’s ashamed because the civilians he knows would feel shame and so now he’s no longer a warrior just an ashamed has been with eight dollars in his bank account and a plummeting credit score and so maybe that’s why finally he rented car or posted a goodbye on Facebook, or didn’t say anything and then you hear from a Marine who heard it from a Marine that ______ is dead because he killed himself.

And you wonder how it happened and you wonder if he just wanted to go home and you wonder if he finally got some sleep. And you wonder if he finally knows the end of war.

And you wonder, before he pulled the trigger if he took the barrel of his pistol out of his mouth like you did because he didn’t like the taste of CLP either.