A few days ago, I was sitting in the airport muttering to myself because my flight had been delayed for several hours.  To pass the time, I began to talk to another stranded passenger, who was seated beside me.  We introduced ourselves; his name was Jake and he was on a business trip.  I told him many things about how I had become a police chaplain; then Jake told me the story of his life.  He said that he grew up in a little town where life was good.  At eighteen, he met the girl who would become his wife, and shortly before he volunteered to go to Vietnam, he gave her an engagement ring.

Of course, as was true of most young men of that time, Jake admitted he had no idea of the reality of war and what being a soldier in the Vietnam War would be like, having grown up seeing John Wayne and the people he shot in movies dying painless and bloodless deaths.  His father had served in World War II, but had spoken little to him about the war and the price he paid for being a part of it.  Jake seemed to be an honorable man who loved his country, and believed in doing the right thing and protecting freedom.

Arriving in Vietnam, Jake was immediately deployed to be a part of a unit where violent encounters and death were common.   As a part of that unit, Jake experienced much of life that was traumatic and horrific; events that day after day seemed to take pieces out of his heart and his soul.  Jake saw his friends die violent and painful deaths, he saw children who were tortured or murdered.   He didn’t specifically tell me what he had done in Vietnam, but Jake indicated that he had to do things that somehow violated his sense of right and wrong, of good and bad and how one person should treat another.  Jake said that as the days passed in Vietnam, he knew he was building walls around himself and could feel himself becoming hard. Pictures of bodies and blood and pain constantly flashed in his mind so that even when he was physically away from the horror, he carried it with him.  Jake sighed as he remembered that was the times when deep and restful sleep became impossible.  Jake had tried to drink away the pain, but, just as in taking aspirin, when the effects of the alcohol wore off, his pain returned.

When Jake returned from Vietnam, only his fellow soldiers understood what he had seen or experienced and how this horror had changed the very essence of who he was and how he dealt with the world.  Jake married his sweetheart and had children, but sleep was rarely refreshing and he felt as if he were surrounded by an invisible  wall which kept him isolated from his friends and family.

One summer, when Jake was in Washington, DC for a business trip, he visited the Vietnam Memorial.  As had many before him, Jake began to search for the names on the Wall of the men from his unit who had died while fighting in the war.  Frowning, Jake remembered that as he found the names on the Wall, a very strange thing happened; he experienced an unseen force that pulled on him in such a way that he found himself unable to leave the wall.  Jake said he felt like a nail being pulled to a powerful magnet.  “I couldn’t make myself go home”, he told me.  “I deserted my family and job.  I guess I was a street person.  I slept by the wall; I abandoned everyone and everything that had meant anything to me.  I felt dead inside; I went through the basic things I needed to sustain life...I was a robot.”

One night, as Jake lay by the Wall in his ratty sleeping bag, “I fell asleep....but I was tossing and turning.” Soon Jake indicated that he began to dream. “In this dream, all of the men I had seen die or dying in the war, were standing around me.  I was still having vivid flashbacks of their bloody and painful deaths; but the guys standing around me weren’t injured or in pain.  They were talking and laughing as I looked up at them from my sleeping bag.

Then, the guys asked me, ‘Why are you here sleeping in a ratty sleeping bag beside this Memorial where our names are engraved?’”  Jake frowned and remembered replying to them in his dream, "I don't know why I'm here, I feel stuck.  I can't get away."

"We aren't here," Jake said his buddies told him.  "We have moved on.  If you remain here, stuck, and pulled away from life, then our deaths were meaningless...it means we died for no reason.  We gave our lives to give freedom and peace to others,  but you’re not free."

Jake’s eyes began to water as he remembered, “They all reached down and pulled me up out of the sleeping bag, dusted me off, shook my hand and said, “You should be the memorial to our life!  Get out of here; go live your life.  Be happy, love your family and friends, be good at your job.  Laugh a lot.  The freedom we died for gives you the opportunity to be the very best of who you are and who you can be.  Give meaning to our death by your life”.

Jake hesitated a minute, feeling maybe he had let me in on too much.  I wanted to know what happened, so I kept encouraging him to tell me more.   Perhaps because I’m a chaplain, he continued.  “I can’t remember exactly how this happened in the dream,” Jake said.  “You know how strange dreams can get. Somehow each of my buddies decided to give me  the very best of who they were as a gift.  One gave his laughter, another gave his skill for solving problems, another gave his incredible ability to have numerous friends, others gave me important things.   The dream was weird because somehow these gifts seemed to go into my heart.   Jake hesitated again, still a little embarrassed that he was telling me so much.  “Then the guys told me to use their gifts to become the best of who they were. Each of the guys put their hand on my shoulders and directed that I become a memorial to their lives if I wanted to honor them.  They let me know that I could do this by becoming the best of who they had been. “

Jake remembered that after his buddies challenged him to be a memorial to their lives, he woke up.  “I was still laying there in my dirty sleeping bag.  The dream was still in my mind; the meaning became clear.  I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’  The sun was rising and the light was beginning to shine on me.  The whole world looked as if it had changed; the colors were brighter, everything seemed more alive.

I threw  the dirty sleeping bag in a trash can and walked away from the Wall.  I didn’t look back.  I now understood that my buddies weren't in the memorial, they were in my heart.” 

I asked Jake what happened when he returned home.  “My family and friends were angry.  They didn’t understand what had happened to me.” Jake told me. “But the dream had changed me; I felt like I really had taken in all the gifts the guys gave to me.   I worked really hard on my relationship with my wife and kids.  I made new friends.  I even changed job; I became a cop; I wanted to make the world a better place.   I really don’t understand it, but that crazy dream changed my life.”

I asked Jake how the dream had changed him?   He thought for a moment.  “I’m happy.  I love my family; I talk to my friends.  I used to be so obsessed with the traumas of the past, that I lived in the past.  Now, I live in the present”, Jake continued,  “As a cop, I still see things day after day that are violent and bloody and sad.  But, I keep a picture of the Wall in my cruiser.  It’s there to remind me that my life is a living memorial to all my friends and co-workers who died for freedom and for justice.  When I look at the picture, I remember that I have learned not to allow the horror and sadness in the world to make even a part of me die before my time.”

© 2000; 2006
Nancy Davis, Ph.D.,
Father Denny Hayes, M.S., M.Div.