4:30

My father was a simple man. He served in the Navy during WWII. I popped into the world around the same time. He planted me in my mother's little garden the day he left for duty. I was two years old when he finally made it home for good. Of course, I'm going on second-hand information here. All I remember is looking up and seeing God because he had an aura around his smiling face. After that, he was just some guy who lived with my mother.

Children should be seen and not heard, he used to say out loud when he became frustrated with my brother or me. My brother was older. I was a mistake. He never talked about his past. "What was it like when you were my age, father?"

That question strained his limits of conversation, and he struggled with it. I had assumed it was because he didn't remember. Or that he was bothered by it. And as I look back, I understand his struggle. I understand he tried to forget. Bad memories empower forgetfulness, they secret an ink that clouds our minds and covers what tries to get out.

Mother wouldn't answer it either. "That is for your father to tell," she said as only a mother can. I finally found out his hidden secret.

He had to clean up after battles by gathering the dead from the beaches and the water. Wherever there were dead soldiers, he'd be there afterward. The war kept him busy. By the time his outfit reached Iwo Jima, he felt like retiring.

He smoked like a nervous hooker, "we all did," he would tell me. Whenever I asked why he smoked so much, "We smoked like nervous hookers." I struggled trying to understand what a hooker was, nervous or otherwise. That tidbit slipped out and he clammed up after it did. "Don't smoke," he once said when he found me looking at him. I stared at him because I admired him. He knew it, but wouldn't let that emotion break the barrier. He smoked for forty-seven years and finally, the people who make Camel cigarettes made good on their promise.

Two days before he died my father had me sit down with him and he told me something he said he'd carried inside him for all those forty-some years. Breathing was difficult for him by this time, but he managed to get out a confession.

He called the vessel he served on a mortuary ship. It would follow the fleet around, he told me, and clean up the marines and sailors who wouldn't be making the trip home.

He said, "We had just taken the beaches of Iwo Jima; the Marines were all over the place, on the beaches, inland, and ships. Some were just mangled to pieces. The soldiers kept busy organizing their operations and trying to stay alive. The Japs had mines planted everywhere, including the water, and every so often you'd hear an explosion and you'd know there'd be another guy not goin' home.

"You expect people to get shot or blown up in war, and these guys had been through Hell. But I saw somethin' that day in the lagoon that made me sick to my stomach, and it's still here," he said pointing to his chest, "in my head."

"This new troop carrier had just anchored in the bay waiting to unload its cargo of fresh marines. These guys hadn't even seen action yet." He paused. His face turned red. He looked like he was holding his breath. I asked him if he was all right. He nodded and put his fist to his chest like he had heartburn or something. I figured it was his heart. He had been keeping his doctors in the upper tax bracket for years. How long can you keep it up? I waited and looked at him. We both knew he wouldn't last long. Besides, what could I do for him? He looked at me hoping I wouldn't notice, like I had no idea he was sick.

"Finally," he said, "the carrier was floating near the entrance to this lagoon when suddenly a mine hit it. By the time we got there, bodies were all over the place, just floating face down. Some, no, most had been killed by the explosion and looked it, and some, well, they were just dead. We got busy pulling them up outta the water. Some guys were down there in troop carriers scooping them up. We dropped nets to them," he stopped to catch his breath. For him, this was his confession to the pearly gates. Then he continued, "and grappling hooks, anything to get them the hell outta the water as fast as we could.

"The medics checked them. They moved from body to body quickly. One doctor finally stood up and took off his helmet and scratched his head and walked over to the Ensign in charge and said, 'But they all have broken necks.' "

Slowly my father continued, "When they were told to abandon ship, many of them were still wearing their helmets, and jumped overboard.

"Shit, son. That's at least a 20-foot drop. Do you know what their heads did when their helmets hit the water from that height?"

I didn't know if this question was hypothetical or not, so I said, "Uh, no."

"Their heads snapped back the second they hit the water and broke their necks." He stopped talking and coughed, his eyes were moist from the coughing, I thought, maybe it's the memory of those Marines. "Those dumb-ass motherfuckers never even got shot at and they died before any of 'em could shit their pants." My dad chuckled a bit, "I threw my helmet down right then and there and never wore it again."

Then he coughed. He coughed good and hard. He coughed until he spat blood and turned a couple of shades of purple. My mother came in then and gave him a shot of morphine the doctor had given her. We waited until he fell asleep and left the room. That was the last thing he said. He died a few days later in the early morning before anybody got up. My mother later told me she had heard a noise and when she realized her husband wasn't there she went downstairs and found him facing the window, slouched over in the chair. His cane had knocked over the lamp.

He had been upstairs for weeks unable to even go to the bathroom. How he got downstairs beats the hell out of me. My mother still laments over that. When she saw him, she screamed bloody murder. It was 4:30 AM. I have to say he looked a lot better lying there than he had the last few weeks. It's as if all the worries left him the minute he stopped living. I don't think this could be said of the bodies he recovered in the war.

For weeks afterward, my mother would get up at 4:30every day like an alarm went off, go downstairs, and clean the living room,except she never touched that chair again.