A Soldier's Lament

Chapter 2

  "Dad! Are you okay? What's wrong?" His daughter Maria said as she freaked out over him and she brought her kids Emilio and Avery with her so this was gonna be good.
"Maria I need to talk to you in private...it's about my...you know..."
  "It's getting worse isn't it?"
  "They gave me two months...I'm sorry honey..." He looked at her with a look of deep sadness and she was about to cry
  "No Dad...you're a fighter...you can pull through this like you did in Vietnam..." she went over to him and sat on the bed next to him
  "Don't worry for me and no tears...not in front of the kids..." he told her and sat up and looked at her and smiled
  "Okay dad..." she tried to smile to him
  "Mom is grandpa gonna be okay?" Emilio asked
  "Yeah is he?" Avery followed up as they sat on the bed at the foot of the bed and looked at Derek
  "Yeah I will be fine Kids...who is up for a story?" He asked them
  "We are!" They exclaim with excitement
"Okay then...let me tell you about what it was like when I was a child..." He began "back when I was a young boy growing up in the '50's and '60's things weren't as technical as now...the cars didn't have automatic parallel parking you had to do that by hand back then, most people did go out and play and had picnics or just went fishing. Everything was good...now this of course was after World War Two which my father fought in who was your great grandpa Sandusky. He wasn't a man of backtalk so if you mouthed off to him your butt would have been slapped with a belt...just ask your mom she made the mistake of cursing in front of him when she was little...she never did that again."
  "No I did not...it hurt for two days..." She looked down
"He doesn't sound very nice grandpa..." Avery said and Derek smiled
"It doesn't seem like that but he was a nice man...he was also a general manager at the Ford plant...the building that you can see out the window...it's been torn down...well most of it but there is one part that still stands and that is where my dad worked. He gave a great life and things went well. Usually on Friday's he would buy a Pepsi for me and my brother Jared. My favorite was always the cherry Pepsi."
"Mine too!" Emilio said smiling
"Well then seems great men think alike...my dad also loved it and he did well in his life and we barley had money troubles. Elvis was still playing around the 60's and that was around the time I was getting into my teen years. I had an eye for a few girls when I was 13. I was rejected by all of them but one was nice to at least become my friend. My brother and I started to drift a part a bit but we still hung out sometimes and he was still nice to me. Then right around my 18th birthday I decided to up and join the army and I got shipped to Vietnam...by this time the war was almost over and it had been going for about maybe 19-18 years but the fight was still going."
"What happened in Vietnam?" Avery asked him and he just looked forward a bit
"Horrible things...men dying right before you like any war, and napalm was dropped and those fires raged hotter than hell. I remember we were out walking one day with the entire squad and then we got ambushed...we stopped to help some Vietnamese girl but she got up and ran and some people came out of hiding and shot at us...there were 10 of us and 6 survived...we lost four good men and I got a shot in the arm and in the foot."
"That sounds scary grandpa did it hurt?" Emilio asked seeming intrigued
"You better believe it did...I was still able to fight all the way up until the very end then we were pulled and we came back. We didn't get too big of a welcome since most were against the war. But I didn't care if people treated me like a hero or not I fought and I lived through some hell. I didn't get over seeing some good people die in front of me...it still gives me nightmares..."
"It sounds horrible..."
"It is...but we stopped the spread of communism and for my time that was a big deal to stop the reds.'