My grandfather died by suicide in 1966. Fifty-two years later, I met him for the first time.

Until then, I had pieced him together with bits of information collected here and there over time, discussed in hushed tones and select company. Until then, he’d been three things: angry, intoxicated, suicidal. After all, that’s what took his life.

After I finished my basement, my father brought over a box of my grandfather’s war memorabilia, in case I wanted to display some alongside my own items.

An embroidered shoulder patch read, “U.S. Air Force.” My grandfather was a mechanic, crawling into the belly of planes, making emergency repairs in a cramped darkness. He didn’t just know B-17’s and B-25’s. He flew in them – 103 combat missions.

There was an eyepiece he peered through to confirm bomber hits as a gunner in the Pacific during World War II. He defended his plane from attack, firing at enemy fighters.  

Another patch had six stripes with a bar on top. He was a Senior Master Sergeant, statistically the most difficult rank for enlisted servicemen to achieve.

More than war memorabilia was removed from that box. Memories were too.

My grandfather was the oldest of the three brothers. All three boxed in the Golden Gloves amateur league. My grandfather was the first of the three to volunteer, anticipating war.

By 1944 the Air Force needed pilots, so he volunteered and returned to training. He met my grandmother in flight school where she was his math professor. In the last day of class, he brought her an apple.

“If you’d brought it on the first day, maybe you would have gotten a better grade.”

She had a mind for math, and a sense of humor. I could hear them laugh. We laughed too.

My grandfather proposed after six weeks. He was leaving for his next assignment. I could hear the click of her heels on the floor, see their arms linked as they swept off to their next adventure.

My father was born in 1949. Growing up, my grandfather would take him flying, handing over the controls, reminding him not to over-steer. I could see my dad, a child, looking up at his own father with awe, the rush of speeding through clouds.

In Galveston, Texas, my grandfather led firearm safety lessons with neighborhood kids in the family garage and rebuilt car engines with teenagers.

When my father was 8, my grandfather took him to a turkey shoot. Young kids have steady hands, and my grandfather taught him to exhale before firing. In one match, the first round ended in a three-way tie between my father, my grandfather, and a Texas State Champion. Fifty years later, my father remembers the pride.

By the mid-60’s, my grandfather retired on disability, details unclear. Then, things changed…

Whispers and downcast eyes had always marked conversations about my grandfather. This day was different. There was awe, humor. He was more than his demons. He was human.

Yes, darkness churned beneath the surface, darkness that only my grandmother, aunt, and father knew, experienced, hid away, even into adulthood. Lingering memories of my grandfather were stronger than the sound of his voice or the smell of his skin, threaded through them like the embroidery of the Senior Master Sergeant patch. Pride mingled with the mothball must of a closeted uniform. My grandfather’s weight, sinking into the corner of a bed, chain-smoking, drinking. A slideshow of moments.

After my father left, I cried. For my father. For my grandfather. For the countless families with similar stories. The monsters had lived on. They had overtaken the memories of the man. We had let them.

My grandfather was not the three-pronged man I imagined: angry, intoxicated, suicidal. He deserves to be remembered as more.

I do not excuse his abuse of our family, however, he does deserve to have his beautiful qualities remembered too. There was good.

How did war change him? What did he see, do? You can pretend targets aren’t human, as if you didn’t kill. But he did kill. For us. It is traumatic to witness the deaths of your fellow countrymen, to be responsible for their survival, in a war you cannot control. It is also traumatic to kill the enemy. They too are someone’s son, husband, father.

What America did he return to – notions of masculinity, taboos about mental illness? The bottle was his refuge from a world incapable of understanding, that wanted only to see the hero, not the human. Maybe we had failed to recognize his humanity too. The world saw a hero. We saw a monster. He was neither, and both.

Anger reflected feelings about himself – hatred fueled by what he had seen and done, failed to do. The shadows were the enemy that he could not defeat. They stole his life. They stole our memories.

We only honor soldiers who die in battle as having given their lives, but that is wrong. Survivors sacrifice the future they could have had. They sacrifice peace. They sacrifice sanity. They sacrifice relationships. With wives, husbands, children, grandchildren.

My father was seventeen when my grandfather committed suicide, after years of deteriorating physical and mental health. Everyone carried the burden. Terrible memories overshadowed beautiful ones. Blue on black. They still heft the weight.

You can see the rumbles of war – artillery and tanks – reverberate through puddles on the battlefield. You can see them shudder through generations too. The desire to control, when so much has been outside our control. The empty spaces in memory and time. Where others had family, had stories, we had vacant darkness and closeted monsters. Until a sliver of light slipped beyond the threshold.

My grandfather survived the war, but sacrificed his life nonetheless.

My Navy cover now hangs on the wall, alongside my father’s Air Force cover, and my grandfather’s flight helmet.

Some memories are so finely embroidered into the fabric of who we are that they last for generations.  

– Hilary Moore

Note: This piece was previously published by Line of Advance in Oct 2022.