I am the Storyteller and I have words to share with you all today.
Take a ride back in time with me, circa 1958, me around ten years old, driving down Proctor Street, Tacoma, Washington, a sunny day, my dad at the wheel of our 1954 Mercury, past North 19th, past North 21st, past North 23rd when I spy, with my little eye, a group of men, eight total, all dressed in suits, all walking along the sidewalk, heads down, no eye contact, shuffling along, no apparent purpose for their journey.
Strange, I thought, but didn’t give it much more than that, me being young and much more interested in the ball game planned for later that day, or perhaps Janis Armstrongs budding breasts, which had captured my attention that year at St. Patrick’s School.
A few days passed, days filled with summer activities, riding bikes, playing catch, goofing around as kids are apt to do, when one day my buddy Denis and me, riding bikes to the Proctor Shopping District, rode right past the same eight men, all dressed in suits, all walking along the sidewalk, heads down, no eye contact, shuffling along, no apparent purpose for their journey.
Later that evening I asked my dad about those men.
“Bill, those gentlemen were in World War 2. They never made it totally home from the war.”
A strange answer. I asked for more.
“Some soldiers, Bill, they are changed because of the things they see, the things they do, in a war. Their minds just get jumbled, and they can’t function in life like they did before the war.”
“Isn’t there any help for them?” I asked.
“For that group of eight, Bill, no, no there isn’t,” and that answer was true back in 1958. Fortunately, today, almost seventy years later, we know about PTSD, and there are procedures which can help the soldiers who never quite make it home, the soldiers who can’t quite take care of themselves because they paid the ultimate price for serving their country.
I met a woman once, this being 2006, both of us in a treatment facility in Edmonds, Washington. We will call her Sophie for this re-telling of her story.
Sophie was raped by her father when she was thirteen. She ran away from home, was found by a pimp, and was a prostitute by her fourteenth birthday. Drug addict at fifteen, almost dead from an overdose at sixteen, married and divorced at seventeen, and by eighteen, when I met her, she had no hope, no dreams, was just putting in her time until the Great Darkness consumed her once and for all.
A funny thing happened to Sophie, to me, at that treatment center. We both found whatever it was we both needed to find and today, eighteen years later, we are still sober and living meaningful lives. Sophie went to college, got a degree, then a masters, in counseling, and today she is married, has two children, and is a respected member of the community where she and her family reside. She and I still exchange emails from time to time, just checking in with each other, sharing the triumphs, basking in the memory of a small handful of people who refused to turn away from us, who refused to allow our darker demons to overcome our better angels.
No more turning away, from the weak and the weary.
“Just a world that we all must share,
It’s not enough just to stand and stare.
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?”
The words of Pink Floyd, their haunting melody, the guitar notes which claw at your heart, I shed tears for the memories they invoke, memories of what could have happened, to yours truly, if everyone had turned away from me, from Sophie, from several people I know who are diagnosed with PTSD and are receiving the help they need.
What does it say about any of us if we see suffering and yet turn away from it?
Bill
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Thank you and remember, no more turning away.
