I was going to tell him the rest of his life is both a long time and the blink of an eye, but Beau knew that also, from harsh experience. Instead, I said, “What you choose to do with your life is now up to you. Find your passion. Then find a way to make a living at it. Do so, and you’ll never work a day in your life. Most of all, remember that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but only a moment to destroy it.”
I paused again, to press back tears.
“And always, always remember, Beau, that you are loved.”
“I know, Dad. I love you, too.”
I do not recall my father saying those three words to me, though I know he loved me. Words were just not his way. I saw his love when he dropped us at school each morning and then drove to the pharmacy to work those long hours, in the way he watched our grammar school basketball games after mass, then hurried home to work on the cars so my older siblings could drive to school. He had given his life to us. A father at twenty-one. Six kids by the time he turned thirty.
But man, I had always wanted to hear those three words from him.
I wanted my son to hear them from me.
“I love you, too,” I said.
In the dorm room, Elizabeth and Mary Beth gathered and flattened the empty cardboard boxes. Mary Beth looked as distraught and uncertain as Elizabeth, though for an entirely different reason. She no doubt contemplated that she would be the lone child at home and would be living life under a parental microscope. Outside, cars lined the dorm’s circular drive. Young men and women dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops walked the sidewalk wearing expensive sunglasses and broad smiles. Camp college was underway, four years ripe with potential and possibilities. We carried the cartons that had held my son’s life to the car, and I slid them into the back while my wife said her goodbye.
Elizabeth wore sunglasses, but they did not hide the tears that ran down her cheeks. She had her arms around Beau’s neck, stretched onto her toes, whispering in his ear. Her baby boy was a man.
And he was leaving home. Leaving her.
I remained stoic, for my son’s sake. When at last Beau had hurried off, we got into the car. Elizabeth sat in the back seat, willingly giving the front seat to Mary Beth. In the rearview mirror I watched her stare out the window as Los Angeles slipped away, and we drove through long stretches of brown nothingness, silent.
I held it together, mostly. Grief would come over me like a rogue wave. My stomach muscles gripped, and I emitted forced, choked sobs.
“Dad. Are you all right?” Mary Beth asked when the first wave struck, thinking perhaps I was having a heart attack.
Unable to speak, I nodded and waited for the wave to roll over me.
Elizabeth did not ask if I was okay. She knew the pain, and she knew, better than anyone, that the only salve was time.
As I drove those many miles home, I ruminated on the months before my son’s departure for college, and I thought also of the summer months before I went to college. Though the circumstances had certainly been different, the waves that hit Beau his senior year of high school had provided him a radical and harsh new perspective on life and death, just like the waves that had hit me.
December 24, 1968
My plane landed in Tokyo to refuel for the flight to Seattle, but I never left my seat. A flight crew got on and the stewardess told me I had time to get off the plane to stretch my legs and buy some food. I declined. I was not going to tempt fate by getting off the plane until I landed safely in New Jersey.
The plane was refueled, and ten hours later, we landed in Seattle. US soil. From Seattle I flew to Newark, New Jersey. It was all happening so fast, thirty-six hours from Vietnam to stateside. In Seattle I had to deboard and change planes. I went into an airport bathroom. I realized I hadn’t washed Vietnam from my body, though I had changed into my laundered utilities before boarding the plane in Vietnam. My hair was unkempt and my face unshaven. I looked like hell. I’m sure I smelled worse, given the looks I received. I tried to wash using paper towels. A guy approached the sink beside me. My skin tingled with the anticipation of a confrontation.
“Did you serve?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Thank you,” he said.
I turned and looked at him, uncertain what to say. He smiled and stepped past me.
I fought back more tears.
I reached my gate. I hadn’t called my mom and dad to tell them I was on my way home. “Home.” It sounded like a foreign word.
I looked for a pay phone just as I heard a woman’s voice over the loudspeaker. She advised that the flight to Newark was boarding. I was not about to miss it.