Finally Got to It

This is a place I have never been before, the RI Veteran's Cemetery. I have promised to visit an old friend buried there and viewed the trip down like any Rhode Islander would, to damn far. It's like driving to Tulsa. “Exeter? Exeter's way out on the edge of the Earth!” By the way, I found Exeter to be filled with farms still.

The cemetery is a big place really, so big that the wind has nothing to stop it and it blows like it does on Nebraskan wheat fields. I'm not used to that. Also, there are various memorials to the Marines, SpecOps and other Rhode Island units that fought in wars. To my surprise, it was sort of full of people visiting graves. There was an ongoing funeral while I stood there upon my friend's grave, about 80 yards from me.

“CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Three volleys of shots had rung out, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. I spin around and I see an honor guard with those old WW2 M1 Garand rifles smoking, pointing into the sky.

I had forgotten just how loud a high powered rifle can be. I hadn't fired one in over a decade. Never mind a monster rifle like a Garand. Well, guess what I thought to myself then, “This is a military cemetery...moron.”

**

I had met Vin in 1993 as he was a guest teacher in Ericksonian hypnotherapy at RIC. He was also one of the guys who regularly attended symposiums, lectures at Esalen at Big Sur in California. I've talked about Esalen before. What a time and place to be when a part of the hippy movement coalesced there and brought forth the Human Potential Movement that's still sort of going on today. At the class I had with him at RIC, he demonstrated how to induce hypnosis on someone, me. He knocked me the hell out with his little story that woos you into a weird sleep almost. I thought that way too cool.

For some reason, as people always do, Vin and I hit it off. How friends are made is always a hit and miss adventure, one that I think is more due to chance meeting than much else. We were “close” in an odd way. We came to know one another rather well as we both resonated to one another's personality. We weren't close friends as we didn't see each other that often at times. In fact, years could go by before we met up again and we'd pick up where we left off. There was also a huge age difference, he at the time was 67 and I was 29. Even so with that, we easily grooved into one another.

Vin was a vet from WWII. He was a sergeant in the 103^rd “Cactus Division” that invaded the south of Europe after Normandy was opened up in the north. He had told me he had come close to being killed there twice.

“We were in the Rhineland attacking a village stuffed with Wehrmacht soldiers. We had to crawl along the fields as they had spotted us and started opening up on us. I then heard a good THUMP and looked just to the right of my head. Next to my head was a smoking mortar round that had fallen there, half buried in the grass. It was a dud. Had it gone off, my head and torso would've been all over that field.”

“Another time, I was placed on the battle roster for an attack in the streets of small town, for some reason I do not know, I was taken OFF that roster and a guy I sort of knew was put in my place. The next day, that guy was taken out by a German sniper.”

“To this day, I often think of those two times and why I lived...pure damn luck I guess. I still don't get it”

Coming home from the war, he gained his PhD, taught at BU when GI Bill money was flooding institutions, bringing in not your usual students. These new students were a bit older and have traveled the world; and participated in a major war. This pile of new money also afforded newer ideas as it broke down some of those old, ossified colleges.  The Eisenhower Era of Leave It to Beaver was about to come to an abrupt halt. 

At the same time, everything else in the US was changing. Beatniks, civil rights protests, hippies, Vietnam, you name it.   In universities, original, stranger ideas on how to teach were being experimented with. For Vin, that meant unconventional therapies as Freud and his crowd were abandoned for the exciting, unfamiliar viewpoints in psychology. Adler, Skinner, and the birth of client centered therapy. The Human Potential Movement (how far can you grow? how well? how high?) was being born, to culminate at Big Sur in the 60's at Esalen. From every direction novel change was coming. Dylan's the Times They Are a'Changing was their anthem. Vin readily adopted this newer thinking and luckily was there when it all happened.  

Want weird? How about acting the different parts of your life out in real time, as if you went to Actors Studios West, being taught by Lee Strasberg himself. And that too was new, method acting.  Don't laugh, the empirical studies done later bore out that these new therapies, worked. 

Vin, in his later years, tried to find out just where the happiness in life lies. We spend our entire lives trying to find something that lasts, that sticks, but it always fades. He had come to the conclusion that since we have five senses, taste, hear, see, feel and smell, and that's all we have really, he would indulge them as much as he could. So, he became a wine collector, albeit starting late in life.

He told me a story once about coming through Logan airport, carrying an expensive bottle of Italian Trebbiano Toscano wine when it slipped and smashed on the concourse floor.

“SON OF A MUTHAFUCKING BITCH!!” He tells me he yelled out. He then knew he had only one chance to smell the wine's bouquet and he got down on his hands and knees to sniff it up.

“You did this? Christ, you don't let any small chance get away from you, do you?” I said.

“Son, in those instances, you have to move quick! Grab it while you can!” he said.

Good advice.

**

Three months before he had died, Vin told me he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I sat there completely helpless in anything I could have said. What do you say to that? What fixes can you offer? None really. I eventually eeked out this, “Is there anything you want to do...before...go to Europe again? See Italy again?”

“I hope too.” he said.

The last sight I had of him was while I was trotting down the stairs, looking back and flipping my head with a “see you later” nod and then got into my car and drove off. I did not attend the funeral as it was family oriented and as I have said before, we were friends but in the “see ya in eight months” variety. I had told myself I would go and visit his grave but like many other things I promise to myself that doesn't need my dire attention, I blow off.

Thirteen years have passed since he was buried and today I finally made it there. God, talk about procrastination, or perhaps we're still engaging in that style of friendship, “See ya in few years.”

What's odd, and I'm not alone in doing this, is that I had a soft conversation with him. It's so a completely human thing to do. What did I talk about? I mentioned the fact that we had struck up a friendship out of odd circumstances. That you chose to be buried here. I remembered parts of his life, the war, the divorce, his career and how he managed to keep jogging into his 70's. How he was at Esalen during a time when it was all “happening.”

As I left, I murmured, “You had a hell of a life Vin, nothing to complain about. You have done more things than I have...more than what many Rhode Islanders ever do.”

I'm glad I knew him and am glad I finally made it there.