Act of Valor letter (FULL)

Big thanks go to Thumakia (one of my readers) for sending this to me!!! I'm so touched that you found the entire letter and sent it both to my blog and to my email. Thank you!!!

So here it is the full letter from Chief Dan to his best friend's unborn son:::

 Before my father died, he said the worst thing about growing old was that other men stop seeing you as dangerous...I've always remember that how being dangerous was sacred, a badge of honor. You live your life by a code. An ethos, every man does. It's your shoreline It's what guides you home and trust me you're always trying to get home. Your father was a reader, Churchill of course but also Faulkner and books about Tecumseh, he loved artists who painted people with bodies that looked like boxes, I'd give him hell about that he just say you gotta look harder, Look harder your father would say, I always knew he wasn't just talking about those boxy abstract paintings. There's threats everywhere in a world that's draped in camouflage. Your fathers grand father gave up his life flying a b24 in world war 2, he kept the liberator aloft just long enough for everyone to jump and then he went down with the plane. That's the blood coursing in your veins, Your father was my boss and I was his chief. What we knew about each others traits and our bond as operators. There's a brotherhood between us and we depended on each other more than a family. Tecumseh said although a single twig may break a bundle of twigs is strong.

Our platoon was headed downrange, we had Weimy our sniper he grew up in the middle of the Mojave desert, most excitement he had as a kid was bowling frozen turkeys down the isle at the grocery store. 

Ray our comms guy, our radio man. He grew up in east LA gangland. He had a silver star for pulling a wounded teammate out of a freight.

Sonny he was made of grannet, this guy didn't even do push ups because he was afraid his chest was gonna get too big.

Ajay joined the teams late in his 30's he had been a muay thai fighter all his life, before that he grew up dirt poor in Trinidad.

Mikey had 20 years in the teams, as humble as he was. You never even know him, he kept a picture of his wife in his helmet and a lock of her hair in his pocket, quiet as the breeze and finally senior chief miller, couldn't really tell you much about him other than I'd rather take a knife to a gun fight than have to be interrogated by him.

That last night at home you think about how you coulda been a better dad, a better husband, that bedtime story you shoulda read or that anniversary you forgot. You don't expect your family to understand what your doing, You just hope they accept it. When you get home you hope you can pickup right where you left off.

War is a country of will, theres no room for sympathy. If your not willing to give up everything...You've already lost.

Your father was a good man, growing up without him is going be hard its going to hurt. You'll feel alone, out to sea with no shore in sight you'll wonder why me, why him. Remember you have warriors blood in your veins, the code that made your father who he was is the same code that'll make you a man he would admire, respect. Put your pain in a box. Lock it down, like those people in the paintings your father liked we are men made up of boxes, chambers of loss, triumph, of hurt and hope and love. No one is stronger or more dangerous than a man who can harness his emotions, his past. Use it as fuel as ammunition as ink to write the most important letter of YOUR life. Before your father died he asked me to give you this poem by Tecumseh, I told him I'd fold it into a paper aeroplane and in a way...I guess that's what I'm doing, sailing it from him to you. 

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion;respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Act of Valor letter (partial)

I am still searching for the entire letter from Act of Valor but below I posted the poem by Tecumseh, the Chief of the Shawnee.  I will update this blog when I finally find it. 

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

I'm just sad

Well, I'm not pregnant... For a minute there (or six days) I thought I might be, even with two negative tests. My menstrual cycle is like clockwork. I get it ever 24/25 days or so and this time, it was six days late. I was worried and excited and then this morning (after having insomnia all night and waking up at 11am, after finally falling asleep around six am) I went to the bathroom and after a few moments, I realized that the cramps were awful, worse than normal, actually and then it came. I had just told my husband about ten minutes before that I was six days late and needed another test. Well, I didn't get one because I didn't need it. And a huge part of me is sad about that and yet, a little relieved.

I want to get pregnant badly. I want to have our baby. I want to have that with us together and for the past couple of days, I thought I was. I thought, it's here, finally, I have this little starting point and I will only have more joy in the nine months ahead. But I'm not and the sadness makes me feel stupid. After all, it's only the first period since we started trying and I know it takes longer than that sometimes. But still, I feel a little heart broken and these cramps are awful. Way worse than normal.

I did cut back considerably on smoking since I thought I might be (only 4 yesterday) and there is such a disappointment that it wasn't worth it, and yet, I know it was. I did the right thing in cutting back. It will be easier to quit if I can keep my smoking to the absolute minimum.

Steve wasn't really disappointed but it's different for guys and it's not like he's the one who knows what's happening with my body before I tell him. He didn't even know until this morning that I was even thinking that I might be. I mean, he knew I'd taken two tests and both were negative, and he also knew I was late, but he didn't know how late. So there I am, sad that I'm not and sad that I can't really share that sadness with him because he's not sad. He's just him and sadness isn't apart of his personality.

Once I asked him if Iraq changed him. (That was his first deployment, before we knew each other.) And although he lost friends and saw things that weren't normal for most Americans, the events that happened are normal for the Military. He told me "I guess in some ways they did, I mean I learned that I couldn't be close-minded about other cultures and I learned that bad things happen for reasons I can't explain but I have more mental stability than other people and I guess it didn't really change me." Then he told me, "You probably have seen more than I did when you worked at the hospital." It's true there, I did. Men burned, shot, bloodied. Men without arms, without legs. Men with faces contorted by blasts and bullets and pain. Men that were beaten and broken and not at all human anymore. These men, these strong and brave men, these are the guys that I saw and sometimes, it still gets to me.

We both have PTSD, but ours are different. His is from being in war and he's able to control it for the most part. On bad nights, he just holds me tightly and I'm his safety net. He clings to me and keeps himself in the present instead of going back.  Mine comes from being in the hospital, seeing what I saw. I dream of battles I've never faced, see things I've never seen and being the victims of these things, seeing the injuries I saw on others on myself. Normally, I don't dream about it much anymore. I'm safer now, I'm better now. But the truth is, that they hit sometimes and the other night, I had one.

It was after Steve and I went out to dinner and to see Act of Valor. It's an amazing movie that left me crying and missing my father... (He was Special Ops and died in service and that letter, the letter written by "Chief Dan" to his best friend's unborn son, hit me so hard, they were like words I'd heard my father say, things I'd never heard him say... a combination that left me with a fresh wave of pain at the loss of my father.) We came home and when we went to bed, I turned on Bill Engvall (I can't sleep without TV and on nights when I'm more emotional, I put on stand-up comedy just to avoid the bad dreams). It didn't work that way though. I had a nightmare and another nightmare and I couldn't wake up. I didn't scream and didn't move and I couldn't make myself turn towards my husband and cling to him. I just couldn't make myself get out of this fictional world where I was.

I was in Iraq or maybe Afghanistan. I don't really know, as I've never been to either, all I know is that at my feet were wounded men... wounded men I knew. My father and the "uncles" I knew from his unit, years ago, before we transferred to Germany, before I started working at LRMC, before I saw horrors I'd only imagined or seen on TV or partially healed. They were there, all of them, wounded from a blast, from bullets, from whatever else my mind could think of. And there I was, a medic, working on them, trying desperately to save their lives, to force them to stay with me. I don't really remember what all happened but I know that I failed. They all died and I finally woke up in a cold sweat, tears drying on my face and my husband sound asleep next to me. I didn't scream or moan.

I know because he wakes me up and holds me when I do. He knows my nightmares well and has often held me, often made it so I am safe in reality instead of locked in the prison of black and blue and bloody thoughts. I sometimes get nightmares and can't sleep during the night, not until the sunlight peaks through and I feel safe that the darkness is gone. That's what happened last night. I stayed up all night and watched some stupid show on Netflix (and it really was stupid) but the fear of going to sleep and the fear of facing thoughts that I couldn't bare made it so I couldn't... I just couldn't turn my mind off.

And then, when I wake up, my hopes of being a mother again, ruined by either stress (which I'm under alot of right now) or just wasn't pregnant at all, although I've never been this late before without being pregnant, so I just don't know.

And now there's a sadness in me, from that movie, which was amazing but broke my heart again, the nightmares that brought me back to that darkness I'd thought was almost in the past, and the loss of a strong hope. And the happiness, it just isn't here.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and I'm so very grateful that he's mine. I'm grateful that we have a future together and that my children are happy and healthy and we are a great family, but a part of me is just lost in time, wishing I could make sense of the past few days. I'm not really here, I'm somewhere else and I'm not really sure where that is... It's like I'm here but there's an invisible field around me, fogging the world up so I can't think straight. And I don't know why.

But that's all I have to say for now... I'm just sad...