Danny

Sometimes I am thankful for things I hated at first… like for having had the chance to meet 2 men in my live I adored…

The first one (also in the biblical sense) stepped in my life at the american embassy in Berne, next to where we used to go swimming in summer as teens (called the KWD)… He was stationed there. I was helping my best friend and her mom give swimming lessons 3 evenings a week. And there was this very mysterious and handsome blond, young man, lying on his belly... reading. (!) While his friends were flirting, joking with the "Barbie's" and swimming.. he was reading... At least thats what he wanted me to think (he admitted to me much later). It took him 3 weeks to address me with a short: good evening miss! How polite! I was little over 16 and very frustrated... "good evening miss" was definitively not what I wanted to hear from him. But its all I got for the next 2 weeks. It was Joe, his older friend, a funny redhead covered in freckles, who actually asked me out in his name. Thanks Freckles. All I could think was: 5 weeks for a coffee, he better be worth it! And he was!

I used to call him Danny because he resembled an actor from his favorite TV show: tour of duty.

I showed him my Switzerland, the lakes, the mountains, the rivers on his days off… we spend days just walking and talking... My first overnight hiking, trough the Wallis and Engadin were with him… and when he talked about his home in Watertown NY, that island state park (dont remember the name) he went camping with his dad, I was there with him. I loved to watch him, and those sparkles in his eyes, while he talked about his family, his friends in High School, his pranks... The little dimples that formed on his cheeks when he smiled... 

I used to read in german to him, so he would learn how certain things where pronounced… He then would read his two favorite books to me in english. Zen & the art of motorycle maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, and on the road by Jack Kerouac. Still my favorite books… He wanted to show me so much, about himself… To cheesy? Well... stop reading then.. And BTW.. I am swiss, thats what we are...

Later I even discovered that he had asked my dad to be allowed to ask me to marry him… My dad didn't like american’s, he was a little boy in WW2 in Italy and saw things he never shared with us, but witch must have been “unpleasant”. But he was impressed by this guys guts and determination, and agreed. 


Danny died before that. On a sunny, warm Sunday in may, the 15. it was the warmest day measured until then... Funny the things we remember... We were on Holiday with two of his friends. It was a diving accident. He drowned. Or maybe he had stopped breathing before the air went out. I don't know. And I don't want to know... The cave collapsed and all I remember is that pink cloud out of his mask and his thumb sign to me and Freckles. UP! Freckles turned me around and we started the emergency resurfacing procedure. He held my arms so hard I bruised. No one ever looked at me that way before and ever again. He held my buoyancy compensator with such a firm grip, that I gave in. I just gave in...


I’l never forget Danny's eyes… they could change from that ice clear pale blue of a frozen lake in the mountains, to the deepest skyblue of a warm and cloudless winter day… On February 23. 2011 he would have been 46 years old… (witch is why I wrote this...) when I think hard, I can still remember how his kisses felt…

Today I am thankful for the love I was allowed to share, and for the strength I found, where I didn't expect it. And for my friends who kept me going after that…

And I am thankful for that one night, 19 years ago, I took a cab, after a hard night-shift at work… I never took a cab from this company before… That night I looked into the most peaceful and loving grey eyes I had ever seen, and I knew I was finally home… We got married on February 25. 1994.

And you know what? He still kooks at me with the same amazement and love in his eyes… 

So if I got to go today, I'l go overwhelmed to have had that luck, not once but twice!

Yes I am happy…very, very happy...

Veterans With Insomnia Face Uphill Battle

Sorry, but some posted replies on this article in the Huffington Post really upset me!


The question should not be: where they right to enroll in the first place, or was the fighting worth it. There where young people who, for whatever reason, stood up some day and went out to do, what they believed was the only appropriat­ed thing to do.


These youngsters might have been naive to believe they would change the world for the better, by fighting for the american way of life, their flag or whatever, but who are the theoretici­ans and paper eaters to judge that...


Personally I prefer someone who tried and failed, or made a mistake, than ten who talk and never do anything for real!


So, the question should be: What can we do to support them now? We cry for Japanese people who we will never meet. But when our neighbor wakes up screaming we call the cops!


By shutting down the government they, and some FD and EMS will not get payed. OK, some were excluded to this madness, but the veterans, the ones on widow's pensions or disability annuity's, needing to pay for their mortgage on time... Do you think that will help them feel better? Is that what they deserve, as some posted as commentary's? Do those bloggers really regard themselves as more socially evolved humans than the involved, by posting such rudeness? Who do they think fought for their right to speak up and spread their verbal diarrhea, and every other thinkable nonsense in the Internet under the protections of the 1. amendment?


BTW, I am just a firefighte­r, and I had 8 (!) of my colleagues commit suicide over the past 20 years, because of C-PTSD. I was lucky I guess and just hit the wall and quit. A "tossing diary" helped me. Feel free to contact me for further informatio­ns. 


There is a great book about this, in german: 
"Wenn der Krieg nicht endet: Schicksale von traumatiesierten Soldaten und Ihren Angehörigen, 
by Leah Wizelman http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8594115-wenn-der-krieg-nicht-endet


The English version should come out this autumn, but can be pre-orderd via Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/When-War-Never-Ends-Military/dp/1442212071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302816407&sr=8-1


Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Turning The Place Over

Inside Turning The Place Over

Dead Men, a book by Derek Haines

I have had the pleasure to read two amazing books these past few days. One I already reviewed on my last blog. 


This one is from my favorite writer Douglas Haines. On this book Derek Haines goes more Dostojewski, than Douglas Adams, more boulevard of broken dreams, than the creation Of Sun and Moon by Michelangelo.

Dead men is a dark, angry, journey in to the dept of the souls of 3 friends in Australia, the three Musketeers, who go trough the hell of divorce. They haven't learned to deal with failure, mistakes, loss and guilt. Like wounded wild animals, driven in the corner, they fight back in the only language they know. The characters are not very likable in the beginning. But Derek Haines manages to give them depth and credibility, a real three dimensional shape and the more you read about them, the more you almost develop something like a sympathy, or compunction for them...

You might not like their decisions, but you get to understand them. Because they genuinely believe that they have no other choice. The retributive justice "an eye for an eye" is anchored so deep in our society, and those mens hearts, that it is not questioned at all... Read it for yourselves, I am not giving any more away...

I like the shade of hope, for at least one of the protagonists, that Derek gives us in the end.. 

Its not a easy read, specially not one for kids, or youths. Its raw, brutally honest and genuine. But if you like to be taken on a roller coaster ride to hell and back, this is certainly a book for you! 


Now I will just watch some TV, and rest my mind a while...

AMERICAN WOP Beaver Buffalo Buttons Brass Boxing and Beer: That's why you're here! by Jack Tar (Goodreads Author), Edgar Frankel (Editor)

I loved this book.


Before you read it, go to the homepage http://www.americanwop.com  and get "in the mood".


The description of the story on Goodreads, (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10601538-american-wop-beaver-buffalo-buttons-brass-boxing-and-beer) is already perfect, so I will not add to that. (Would not be competent enough to do so anyway... I know my limits...) 

I can honestly say that, to me, it was the sucker-punch of the year, so far...


And thats what I am looking for in a book. Emotions, memories and thoughts written by a genuine person, willing to tear himself apart to be able to share it with me... trough a book.


To me it read like a diary. Kind of detached bits of a puzzle, that in the end give you the full picture of who and what Jack Tar is. And why he became the guy with a heart of a lion, soul of a poet and fists of a true fighter.


At times it was hard to keep reading, and yes in the last third of the book I cried. My own closeness to some of it, was painful. But it was SO worth going on.


So for those of you who like Christopher Hibbert, Jack Kerouac or/and Stephen Crane go for it! For those who don't... don't!