The Card Table in Heaven

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
God Bless Mummy, Daddy,…..

When I was young, I used to say this prayer every night in my bed. Thanks to Catholic schooling, I was convinced that I would die before I woke and I wanted to be sure and use my heavenly power to bless the dearest people in my life. I would ramble right through my immediate family, assuming God knew that much. Then I would branch out into the family tree: my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents. Evidence (http://www.geni.com/tree/index/619036) suggests that getting through those generations was no small feat. Once I was done with the living, in a half-slumber, I would imagine my deceased grandfather and two uncles sitting at a table, in the cloud-filled heavens. Quite literally, I would be looking right up at them as if from underneath the cloud on which they were perched. I imagined them in uniform: my grandfather in a fireman’s outfit, my uncle in his army fatigues, and my other uncle in a t-shirt and bell-bottom jeans. They appeared at the table at the respective ages of their deaths: 44, 18, and 15. It strikes me that I thought of them each night (always in uniform, always playing cards), but their deaths had an impact on my father and I was aware of that impact at a very young age.

During the holidays when we would visit my grandmother’s house, after a long night of festivities, inevitably I would find myself daydreaming at the hallway desk which sits right by the front door. Sitting on my mother’s lap in the living room, listening to her voice through her chest engage in that boring adult conversation, I would suck my thumb and stare through the doorway at the desk. The desk was pristine; I would venture to say that it was dusted each day. Atop it were two framed photos: one of my uncle George and one of my uncle Tommy. The photos were black and white and displayed clean-cut, happy teenagers. I would listen to the grown-up conversations while I stared at the photos and think about how those boys were the brothers of people in that very room. It was strange to me that my relatives did not talk about George and Tommy, their banishment to the hallway desk seemed eerie and strange to me. My uncles seemed so young and vibrant and I craved to meet them, to hear more about them, but stories did not come until much later in my teens, when my dad began talking about them and Vietnam.

My uncle George was born on January 27, 1948 and my father was born on January 9, 1949. They were Irish twins, born within a year of each other. From stories and photos, I gather that they were best friends…or at least my father’s best friend was George. In the 1980s, one of my fellow ballet student’s mother realized that I was George’s niece and that Freddy was my father. She talked about how George was a bit more extroverted and Freddy seemed to genuinely look up to him. This outside validation of a non-family member mentioning (and remembering fondly) George was momentous for me because he had started to become three-dimensional. Before that moment, I had only known that he was my dad’s big brother who was killed in Vietnam.

In 1968, George was killed in Vietnam after rushing to his medic’s aid during an ambush in An My. When my grandparents were notified of his MIA status (it was not until several days later that George’s platoon was able to return to the field and retrieve his body), my father enlisted in the US Army. Superior officers in the Army discouraged him to go to Vietnam, as the family had already lost one son, but my father (although quiet and seemingly meek) is not persuaded. He had every intention to go to Vietnam. His motivation may have been different than what I perceive, but I imagine his desire stemmed from wanting to see what his brother witnessed, to see where he died, to see why he died. He arrived in Vietnam with the Army in early 1969, after a training period in the states.

When I was little, the extent of my father’s Vietnam stories was limited. On a rural stretch of road during our two-hour drive to New Hampshire for summer vacation, he would turn off the headlights of the car and tell us, “This is what Vietnam looked like.” He said it was tranquil and the jungle was lit by the moon and that you could see a cigarette burning at the end of someone’s mouth from a mile away. Now that I am older, and he is too, I hear more stories about his time there and am shocked that 37 years later he is just beginning to locate fellow soldiers from his platoon. I would have needed them immediately upon return.

I suppose his exceptional return to the US has something to do with that. In March 1970, an officer from the US Army approached my dad (somewhere in the middle of Vietnam) from a nearby helicopter to tell him that his “Pappy died.” My dad assumed he was joking and told him it was in poor taste. Over the course of my life, my dad has showed this physical interaction a few times and it’s always the measly, yet adequately masculine, pat on the shoulder that gets me. So, at that moment, my dad climbed aboard the helicopter in his fatigues. He left behind his weapons.

He flew from Saigon to San Francisco just like that: in his fatigues. He had no money, no other belongings, had not showered, still caked in dirt from the battlefields of Vietnam. In San Francisco, he was confused about his connecting flight to Boston: there wasn’t one. I guess it was not popular to be flying soldiers for free across that country that year. He approached various airline counters and they gave him the same story. The Red Cross finally came through, and loaned him the money to fly to his father’s funeral. Yes, loaned. He paid it back.

Once at Logan Airport in Boston, he was taken by taxicab to his family home where there was a freshly laundered suit and note for him to join his mother and seven siblings down at the funeral. I know he changed into the suit. I’m not sure if he showered.

The next few years are not yet clear to me and they are probably not very clear to him. I do know that he and my mother attended war protests. Photos are evidence of long hair, mustache, occasional partying, and fishing in the Charles River with friends from Roslindale. In 1974, uncle Tommy made his exit to the card table in heaven.

In the early morning hours one night during the summer, the phone rang at the family home in Roslindale. Tommy left a party and had been driving at 15, underage and without a license, in New Hampshire and the police were trying to pull him over. He lost control of the car and his female passenger died along with him. My dad has said that the phone ringing at 2am was all he needed to hear. He drove up to New Hampshire and identified his body. The next day, he went to the impound lot to gather Tommy’ belongings and present were the “regulars” who scrounge through demolished cars to see if anyone left behind money or valuables. They were pointing into the car Tommy had been driving, shrieking and amazed at the blood and hair that were stuck to the driver’s side visor. As anyone in my father’s position would have done, he lost it. I don’t know the whole story, only his which is that he “yelled at the kid.” I imagine that the kid who was ogling got some blood and hair knocked out of him.

I had a blast of panic last winter when my dad called me on my cell phone at 7:30 in the morning. I ignored the first call, as I assumed it was my mom wanting to say something like “good morning”, but after the back-to-back calls decided I should pick up. On the other end was my dad telling me, in his voice that he uses to talk about the Bruins, “Danny’s been in a car accident. He broke his back. We think he’s okay. He went through the sunroof on 93 North. I need to get in touch with Kirsten because Danny was working on something for her.” It was just another crisis drill for my dad, who seemed most concerned about a reservation confirmation for my sister’s business, but it was whole new territory for me. Chris and I had recently been watching the series Big Love and I think its opening sequence influenced my imagination. Immediately, I saw our family as a circle, holding hands and I saw Danny letting go and dropping out of the formation. It was frightening to me that we would have to re-shape into something else and I could feel each of us reaching toward him, urging him to come back. I thought about my dad’s family and how many times their circle has had to take new shape, how some of them still are urging George, George, and Tommy to come back.

Needless to say, Danny is fine. He’s better than probably anyone who has had his injury. On the bus ride up to New Hampshire to visit him in the hospital, I thought about those pictures of George and Tommy on the desk in my grandmother’s hallway and imagined placing Danny in a similar frame. I thought about how the conversations about him would grow silent. And then I realized quickly that my family is not my dad’s family.