My Memorial Day Gift
I started out my Memorial Day weekend with no real plans. I’m a single mom, and my 18 year old son has just graduated High School, so he’s out enjoying some well earned time with his friends, two of which will be headed into military service soon. Ready to enjoy the peace and quiet, I decided I may binge watch Netflix, or find a movie, curl up on the couch with the other man in my life, my chihuahua Angus and just relax. Never far from my thoughts, each and every holiday we honor service members, is my gramps. He passed in 2010.
He was a World War II veteran, and bronze star recipient. Gramps never talked about his service very much. He was hard working, blue collar, (truck driver) and we had always heard he got his bronze star for volunteering to drive a truck loaded with munitions through heavy enemy fire in Germany. Past that not much else, since he never talked about it. My mom always told the story about how she was only 8 months old when he went off to war, and was 4 when he returned home. She didn’t know who he was. She thought her father was a picture that my Gran showed to her, and she was adamant that was her dad. A common story for many of this country’s young men who went off to war and left young families behind.
So on this memorial day I decided to send out a tweet.
After about 24 hrs I received a direct message from a follower, who was a WWII nerd. He was very sweet. Sent me a link to the history of my grandfather’s unit. 63rd Div 254th Infantry M company. He just did it as an act of kindness. See document PDF HERE. (In case you are a WWII nerd or just interested)
I thanked him, because that was always a part of my Pappaw I had never really known. And it wasn’t long until my twitter follower, sent me another link. It was to a page of photographs of M Company. He had no idea the gift he had just given to me.
I was excited to get it. Just to get a glimpse of what it was like. I decided to zoom in on the images, and of course I started with the first one on the page. Zooming in I basically ignored the print underneath. It was tiny anyway. As I kept zooming in the face in the 1st image began to get clearer. As I kept zooming in, my heart began to pound. I KNEW this face. I recognized this man. A realization began pouring over me, that the reason I KNOW this face, is because that is my Gramps. THIS IS MY GRAMPS. I’d bet my life on it. Amidst the nervous girl sweat that was beginning to form on my face, coming to the understanding of what I believed I was looking at, I remembered THERE IS A CAPTION under this photo. Annnnnd THERE IT WAS. Pfc. Lake T Long M Company 254th Inf Germany 1945.
It’s Like Gramps Found Me From 1945 & Said HI!
I’m not sure I can adequately relay to you how this made me feel. This was my Gramps at 20 years old. I was overcome. I had never seen this picture before, and if I hadn’t sent that tweet out, and if my follower hadn’t seen it, and just committed a random act of kindness, I would have never known it existed. It was a gift. A gift on a day where I was thinking about him. It was a precious gift given to me by a twitter follower, and I don’t think he knows what this means to me.
I KNEW I had to show this to my mom. When I did, I took her through it, just like I have taken you through it here in my diary. I wanted to see her face when the realization hit her. I wanted to see her recognize the face of her 20 year old father. A face she had precious few pictures of. He had passed away in 2010, her mom had passed away before I was born, and she is an only child. I wasn’t really prepared for her reaction. My mother is 72 years old, and to see her, as a daughter, recognizing the face of her young father, while serving in Germany during WWII, is something I don’t think there are words for. I saw the tears in her eyes. I saw the thoughts forming. I saw her smile through those tears. I saw a sadness that she missed her father, and I saw a joy that she was meeting him at 20 in 1945 Germany. Her hands shook, and my little mother, all 105 pounds of her wept. It was a joyful and longing weeping, but it was a gift to her. One she never expected.
Sometimes You Just Don’t Know How Huge The Little Things You Do For Others REALLY Are.
To my tweep Mike, thank you my friend. Thank you. I got a tremendous gift this memorial day. It was like my grandfather was looking back from 1945 and being present in my life once again, but in a way I hadn’t known or seen him. Folks in TN back then didn’t have much money and they didn’t have cameras or take many pictures, so this is a treasure to me. You gave me my gramps for a day, you gave my mother her father and I cannot begin to tell you what a gift it was to us both. Isn’t life strange????