Soldier

The last thing he said to me was "You know what you know, and it has already changed you John, but you have to do what I couldnt, go and live some semblance of a normal life, while you can..the rest you will learn with time.". he told me that he would meet me the next day. He never came that day or the day after. I sat in the park for hours, until long after dark, thinking. I thought about Russell, I thought about Fitch and Elise, my mother and father, and everyone from my past. I thought about all the changes that had taken place in my life, and in the world around me. I thought about myself. I decided to do what Russell had said, and I went on living. I took a job as an entry level engineer with General Motors. I designed girders and mountings, and buildings to house them. Dull really, but at least it was tangible, and although I was always an outsider, I felt alittle closer to the center. I also found that my "condition" was not without its benefits, how being able to anticipate things was handy, but if I did it too much the darkness crept too close, so I developed an equilibrium with it, I only drew upon when it was needed, and in return the shadow was held at bay.

My father passed on in 1967, he lived long enough to see the birth of his first grandson to me and my second wife Diane. I met Diane while on assignment near Ft. Wayne Indiana. She was an assistant to the manager of the construction firm that was installing the new tooling machinery that I had designed. She was soft, gentle, and warm everything that I couldnt be. We were happy together, of course I lied about my age. We had our first son Jack in October of 1961, we were married less than a month afterward. After my father died we took care of my mother. She began to notice that I wasnt changed. She would sometimes stare at me, when I would turn to look her in the eye, she would look away. She knew, but she couldnt explain what it was that she knew. For all her pride in her son, and joy at the birth of her grandson, my father took her heart with him when he died, and she succomed to heart disease two years to the day after he was laid to rest. I was hurt, but in some small way I felt safe, she was the last person to know the truth. In 1971 I celebrated what should have been my 60th birthday with my family. To them it was my 40th. I had taken to buying hair dye to try and lend to the appearance of age, but even as I applied it in the mirror, I knew the horrifying truth of what was going to happen. I was going to destroy everything I loved, and their notions of life, simply because I could not participate in it with them. I was 60 years old now, but the man in the mirror was the same man who smiled and fought with the men of the 32nd infantry division in the Phillipines over 30 years ago. Even though I knew it had to end, in some way I had convinced myself that it never would, and like a miser to his last coin I clung to it until I could do so no longer. I grew distant, and became more a friend to alcohol than to my family, and late in the winter of 1984 I recieved the answer to my prayers in the form of divorce proceedings.