Please help others today.
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When you read this, understand that some men have really lived. Today I go into surgery, and may really die.
Visions of my life visited me as I slept last night. I recalled with clarity the days I spent in Cebu City. The girls. The gin. The endless nights of smoke and laughter; the fights and foot-pruning in hot tubs. But there is much more to life than making memories with soapy virgins, and I am here to relate just what I've learned over my past mistakes.
You see, men are born weak and frail. They are dependent upon mother and father for every need. Then they grow up to toddler hood and find out how to open cupboards for themselves.
Later we become 10 years old and start to lie, steal and run fast from merchants who think that profit is more important than the happiness of clumsy youngsters.
All too soon, the teens arrive, with its hormones, condoms and broken hearts.
At twenty one we find ourselves much too close to adulthood, and a profound insecurity begins.
Thirty happens like a mousetrap: SNAP!
Then 40, with its several regrets and countless failures.
At 50 we seem to stabilize somewhat but then, Gerald Ford trips us into reality.
By the time 60 happens we feel as poor as a lost suspender, outside some smelly pool hall, just sitting there rusting.
The 70's bring some relief as we learn how to fraudulently take advantage of insurers. Life is good. Travel becomes easy. Italy and France are within reach once again.
But then in the 80's the tide turns yet again. We are locked up for Grand Theft, and though housed in a comfortable cell, we retreat into the mind as never before.
Today I sit at 89. A fool for sure. Having accomplished all my desires but not one of my goals. I see my wife, 42 years my junior, exchanging email addresses with virile young men who dance for money and kisses. I don't think she has cheated on me yet, but how else can I explain the radiance in her face, that spring in her step, when she returns to my bedside after the visit to her mother?
My recommendation to you all is this: Fill your homes with Joy. Do it as fast and completely as you can. Ignore the price. Just do it. When I was stationed in the Philippines, I met with many poor families who lived in nipa huts. These hovels had but dirt for the flooring. No running water. No electricity. One small meal a day consisted of a little wild rice, mixed with seawater and grass, a few insects for protein and, if lucky, some bananas to fill the stomach.
They told me tales of horror. How the Japanese soldiers would burst into their home and take out the daughters, no matter their age, and brutally rape them, then leave them crying and badly bruised. The sons of these poor families had been taken out and shot, at least, the lucky ones. For the others who appeared strong were forced to labor and test land mines. I'm not exaggerating.
I saw grown men weep as they saw their loved ones in such bondage, days after day, until MacArthur came back. The greatest Naval battle of all time was fought there, and I heard the gunfire, smelled the burning flesh and felt the sands tremble night and day from the air assaults. I witnesses the sea and bay take on a brownish hue due to the gallons of human blood mixed with the splintered wood and dead fish, putrefying birds and unformed corpses.
I fought hand-to-hand for three days, and escaped with my life only by the grace of God. At one time, four Jap soldiers held me down and were about to slice my body in half with a machete. An angel of God came to intervene. He was in the air, as white as anything can possibly be. It blinded my assailants, and I got up and walked away, shaken as a man can be. I looked back and saw the men on their knees.
Things like that never fade.
I visited a village just south of Tacloban three years after the war. I wanted to thank the family that took me in and hid me for 19 days during the purge of the island. While Japanese swordsmen went house to house searching for recruits, missing American airmen and strong Filipino boys, I saw and heard what I cannot to this day write. So unspeakable was the treatment, so mean, cruel and devastating to the spirit, I am convinced that no book will ever tell the tale of what happened there. - to be continued -
