Letter to My Uncle

by Joseph Curran

Dear Uncle Paul,

Sorry, I can’t do Memorial Day.

It’s like a clamp on my heart, pressing deep,

searching for purpose, an understanding for the meaning of grief.

The clamp can help, it can hurt, it can repair, it can stress, it can destroy.

Sorry, I never knew you. I never knew your brother either.

Your brother, my father, Herbert Allen.

Did you know him?

 

He used clamps never knowing the pressure they imposed.

He drank a lot, smoked a lot, stressed a lot, lied a lot.

He hid his past from those whose lives he touched—

those he never saw, who never saw him.

Who hoped he loved them. My mother, my brother, me.

Are there others? We forgave him. Will they?

 

He never acknowledged the bastards he fathered,

like so many good and upright men everywhere,

heroes in their own minds. Living to avoid the clamp

of responsibility. Never caring about the poverty they bred,

the pain they inflicted on the heart and soul. Their soul.

How noble.

 

At least he was a pilot in the Second World War.

Does that count for something?

He never saw much action. Did you know him then?

He drank a lot. Screwed a lot.

The all-American boy.

 

Do you think he studied medicine to make amends?

Becoming a doctor to help others or just himself?

Adding stress to his clamp.

Sorry to ask. I don’t know anything about either of you.

It didn’t work out for him. He died at forty-five.

Heart attack, they say—while driving, driving drunk?

Or just to the hospital? We wonder.

 

Probably never knew of your Indo-China Sea,

of your Luzon.

Probably never knew

three hundred and forty-two thousand human beings died.

Just in that one battle. Just one battle.

The one where you became a number.

Who cares?

 

Did you and the ten other members in your PBY crew care?

With names engraved on stone tablets for the MIA

at the Manila American Cemetery.

 

Leo Boutte. Paul Curran. Paul Demarrias.

Jerry Dougan. George French.

Adolph Riedel. Paul Ryder.

Nelson Sand. Harold Stewart.

John Sullivan. Carl Thomas.

 

Now you are just one of the mason’s flat chisel strokes,

and those old black and white newsreel clips—

with airplanes crashing headfirst into the ocean,

disappearing into the forgotten wasteland of history.

Lost to the deep at age twenty, just a kid, reaching manhood fast.

Too fast. Headlong fast. Hope it was—fast.

 

Not a prolonged floating in the vast bladder of the earth.

Were you able to make a Mayday call?

Did anyone hear? I did. I do.

Petty Officer Third Class.

Aviation Radioman Third Class, Paul Curran.

Sometimes I hear Herbert Allen calling too.

 

Do you now swim with the spirits of the three hundred forty-two thousand?

With the millions and millions lost in countless wars?

With the hundred and fifty thousand USA MIA.

Lost at sea, lost across this vast globe.

This orb of the material realm wabbling in space.

The MIA designation to rationalize your death.

Their death, our death.

MIA—blown to bits, creamed, shattered, French fried, buried alive, drowned.

MIA—the best we could do for you.

 

What grave found your bones?

Are you the fertilizer of jungles,

or do you feed the fish of the oceans—what of your soul?

Do you think my father finds comfort

in his Wichita grave knowing yours?

I don’t think so.

I hear his chains dragging.

You are one of the links.

 

As are all of us—

all of us missing in action now.

Lost in our living and lost in our death.

Dragging the remnants of our souls—

souls closed and forgotten, like coffins.

We pretend to care.

 

So you are a loser now.

Our president said it is so.

It’s official.

His hyenas do not dispute his rants.

What do they make of my father that only served?

 

We have all lost now.

I am so sorry.

As the walking dead with bobble heads—

AKA MAGA—herald their king,

I know I can’t do Memorial Day.

The flags and parades, the flyovers and bouquets,

the wreaths of hypocrisy.

All the Memorial Days for all the losers.

All those newsreels.

Like I was there.

 

I can feel it—the moment, the fear, the prayer, the surrender,

the impact, the oblivion, the sacrifice.

The shadows of death repeated over and over,

for us—for all of us.

Now the shadows before our eyes

as the flag unfurls above their graves.

The newsreels beckon.

 

With sadness and guilt for those who stood

against the darkness of fascism,

all for naught, now that Trump turns the millstone

and we tumble.

It has begun—slow and grinding at first.

The losers, and the MIAs go missing again.

Our hearts are hardened, snapped like a dry twig.

Clamped.

 

With the clamping darkness of our president,

The anti-life, the lost angel of darkness,

has found us.

With death before our eyes.

He blinds us with bitterness and lust.

His fool’s gold of power causes us to stumble

and become his losers.

 

I hope your heart was calm

when you passed into death.

Ours will not be.

Our death will be hard with fear.

We have found havoc,

each looking into his own darkness.

As we lose our individuality—

the responsibility to surrender.

Our duty to receive guidance

from The Great Life Force.

Now a long ways off,

as we have forgotten our source,

forgotten our purpose.

And we thought we got away with it.

 

Best regards,

Joseph