Washington DC: Arlington

I was 11 when my dad died, and he was 63. He married my mother around the time that he retired from the Army as a Sergeant First Class. His enlisted rank should have been much higher, but the civil rights movement had not quite affected the Army's sense of racial hierarchy. I once found a folder full of letters and recommendations from highly ranked officers calling his lack of promotion an "injustice" and "insult" to his decorated career. Those letters went ignored by the people who controlled my dad's fate.

Dad earned his Purple Heart in several ways between his service in Vietnam and Korea. He had a metal plate permanently affixed to his skull as a result of a shard of shrapnel lodging in his head. Large parts of his body were scarred from massive burn trauma he'd received when he rescued several people during a fire in a theater at a fire knife show. We regularly hosted his old war buddies at our home, and my father would always send me upstairs to avoid me hearing the atrocities he'd endured. Despite having spent most of his life as a soldier, my dad was the most gentle man I've ever known.

This is a story I've told so many times that it feels mechanical, almost rehearsed. It used to be almost impossible to tell without me crying, but over a decade of time has dulled the grief and given way to reverence. It feels cathartic to bring it up again after all this time.

In the summer of 1995, dad dropped me off at my day camp at the Solano Athletic Club in Fairfield, CA. He tried to give me a kiss and hug and jokingly tried to embarrass me with his affection. Being a bratty pre-teen, I reared back and got angry, telling him to "just go away." He laughed and blew me kisses as he got in the car, and those were the last words I ever spoke to him. It's the biggest regret of my life.

Several hours after the day camp began, I was standing on a grassy playing field when I heard ambulance and fire truck sirens in the distance. I turned to my best friend Jessica and whispered that I knew there was something wrong with my dad. There was no possible way I could have known, but something in my heart told me that everything was about to crash down on me.

From what I am told, my dad drove home to see my mom and they played in the backyard with our Labrador for a little while. He told her he was going to the athletic club to swim a few laps and asked if she'd come along, but she had errands to run and couldn't go. He drove to the Solano Athletic Club (yes, exactly where I was) and after swimming a few laps in the pool he suffered a fatal heart attack. I was standing 20 feet from the swimming pool building the entire time, with no clue what was going on.

A little girl walked by as the pool building evacuated, and I asked her what was wrong. She told me that a man had died in the pool, and I became frantic. Jessica tried to reassure me, but I could not shake the feeling that it had something to do with my dad. My neighbor Alma appeared at the athletic club entrance a few minutes later, and it was then that I allowed my full-blown hysteria to take over. This was not a coincidence.

She drove me home, all the while trying to assure me that my dad was okay even though she didn't know any details about his "accident." We pulled into my driveway at home to find my mom on her knees on the concrete garage floor, clutching a phone and crying so hard that I thought she was physically wounded. When I jumped out of the car and ran to her, all she could scream was, "I'm so sorry baby, I'm so sorry."

We buried him in Arlington National Cemetery that summer as the first Samoan laid to rest there. I sat silently during the 21 Gun Salute, and even last week when Brian and I passed a funeral, I felt empty as I heard the shots ring out. A uniformed honor guard member presented my mother with an American flag folded into a triangle, and thanked her for his service to our country.

I've visited his grave many times since then, and this latest trip last Friday was a happy one. I like bringing Brian to see my dad, because he is so good-hearted and enthusiastic about visiting him. Brian even went to see my dad alone last year, while he was on a business trip in DC. Our visit on Friday was cut short by the freezing temperatures and bursts of rain, but we both enjoyed getting to spend an hour talking to my dad. We brought him tulips and quietly watched the rain fall.



My next entry will be about our night out on the town with my incredible friend Christina, which was hands down my best experience in DC ever. :) Hope everyone's having a great week.