God's Glorious Grace

I come to a concluding stage of my life story, and it has been rewarding; the reason I said it been worthwhile it like observing me through the eyes of someone else. I had memory loss while in the military, and it affected some of my memory before the military; it was hard to recognize some friends I grew up with, they will talk to me, and I will hope and pray some type of recall will come, but it doesn’t. Some people say I was quiet and easy-going, and others say he was just a nice guy as a young man. I talked to my family about the years we were growing up, and when they talk about things, I cannot remember most of it. I thank God I am here to write to you the reader about my life’s highlights. My years after the military, I was not a normal young man. After coming home from Viet Nam, I looked at my life and retrieved my sorrowful moments for the past forty-five or more years. I left Viet Nam 50 years ago, I enjoy listening to the music of the sixties and seventies, when I hear those songs, and my mind goes back to the Viet Nam. I’m thinking about my fellow soldiers, having a good time with them doing some crazy things that were not normal for everyday people of today. Also, when I listen to songs like What’s going on, God is Love and Mercy, Mercy Me, and Save the Children by Marvin Gaye; I think of the problems and pains that we face each day on top of still living in Viet Nam in our mind. The lyrics from What’s going on, (many brothers were dying, and mothers were crying). The mothers go to church and pray, and their son body continues to come home to go to the church for the last time. Mother’s cried out for mercy, but where is it when you see your son lying in the church. As some combat veterans would say, he is the lucky one, because his hell is over on this earth. Why did God let us live and continue with our life, we must face the fact that it was not our time to go? We had missions in the military, and now we have another task to complete, and that is to “Save the Children.” I continue to listen to the sixties and seventies music in the year 2020 because I do it for therapy and retraining my mind. I do not think of Viet Nam, but my thinking is on times of enjoyment. Positive thought on the here and now, listening to the lyrics of the sixties and seventies I songs relate to the beautiful life I have with my family and friends of today. This morning I was sad and depressing; I did not want to write anymore. The song Little Green Apple I heard in my head. I played the song on my cell phone and listened to it; there was no change in my feeling, so I continue with my chores for the day. I decided to start writing about 2 PM that evening, and about three hours later, I began to hear Little Green Apple song again in my head. I stopped typing and played the song one more time on my cell phone, but this time there was something different when I listen to the lyrics. “And she reaches out and takes my hand, and squeezes it and says How you-feeling hon.” My wife appeared in my mind, and I remember that what she used to do early in marriage. I when to my wife and told her about it with tears in my eyes and said I am sorry, but I forgot about those days. I lived in a world of war for plus fifty years in my mind. I served four years in the US Army and twenty-six years in the US Army Reserves training for readiness, and I retired after 30 years. I worked with the US Government as a civilian for about thirty-six years hoping to readjust to a healthy life living with PTSD. Many co-workers retired too, and they needed help for the problems they developed in the military. They will go for medical help at the VA Hospital; it were like a reunion seeing so many co-worker there, we will stop, look at each other and say, I did not know you were in Viet Nam. Most of us working were suffering from PTSD, many veterans asked for help later in life, and they were calling me mad sometime. It tickles me one day when a co-worker was asking me questions about the symptoms of PTSD, as I was telling him, he will say, yes I do that and on and on. He stopped and looked at me and said, Jackson, I am suffering also from things relating to the war, yes and I said, please let your doctors know so you can get help.