Yesterday a veteran was sitting behind a card table at the entrance to my neighborhood grocery so I dropped all my coins into his jar in exchange for a little red poppy. This morning I returned, and when I noticed him again I couldn’t shake the desire to hear his story even as I loaded shopping bags into my car. Returning to the store with only a twenty dollar bill — and not wanting to donate all I had — I bought one container of whipping cream so I could change the large bill. On my way out, I put two smaller bills in the jar and spoke with the man. I told him I had a blog and liked hearing people’s stories. “What’s my story?” he responded. “I did three tours of duty in Viet Nam, was shot five times and was MIA for 56 days.” I quickly thanked him but found I couldn’t talk further due to tears about to spill. He said that tomorrow he was going up to the Viet Nam Memorial to visit a few friends.

Barry Donaldson was the best man at my first wedding. He was also the groom’s foster brother and my dear friend. I doubt if Barry’s name is on any memorial listing but he’s often the first person I think of whenever Viet Nam is mentioned. Barry wasn’t officially a fatality of the war but a victim of suicide after returning home. While Barry was overseas, I was a flowerchild. Now I display the poppy instead of talking about a topic that after all these decades is still too raw.

In graduate school I had an assignment where I needed to interview someone from a different culture, so I sat down with my friend Tin and listened to her account of getting out of Viet Nam alive as a small child. Tin’s father worked for the government and was able to get his family on one of the last helicopters before the country was overtaken. If you’re old enough, you’ve probably seen news footage of this event: people overrunning the beach for their only chance at freedom. Now I’ve added Tin to my Memorial Day reflections.

My friend Julie’s husband, Bud, is still missing — he’s on the MIA/POW list. My father, while in the Pacific, watched a torpedo hit his boat and not detonate so that’s  memorialized on my gratitude list. All the veteran clients at the Skid Road Community Counseling Center where friends worked in the 1970s…no official list.

Whatever names are etched in stone or in your hearts, they gave it all — and not even the $20 would have been enough.