"Courage"

Courage is defined as the ability to disregard fear; bravery.

The range of situations to which the notion of courage applies spans a broad spectrum. Courage can be viewed as a conviction or a set of convictions; having the courage to act on one’s beliefs. Courage can be seen as having the determination and fortitude to endure adversity and to overcome all that is embodied within that context. It can be applied to a set of circumstances that seem insurmountable. It can be thought of within the context of a debilitating or terminal illness, over which one is determined to prevail. Then there is the act of courage where one is faced with responding to a situation that leaves the individual faced with a miniscule chance of survival.

I have a very good friend who recently faced a bout with colon cancer. He underwent the rigors of surgery, chemo and radiation therapy, and has been reassured by his physicians that they “got it all.” But, not only is colon cancer a deadly sleeper, but there is that intervening five-year period before its victims are safely out of the woods. Each of us has his or her own way of dealing with a blow of this severity, coping in the best way we know how.

Peter is a reasonably young man with a lovely wife and two young adult children. They are a kind and generous family who have that rare ability to make a stranger feel like he is a part of the family within a few minutes of meeting them. I know. I was alone and far away that Holiday Season many years ago when, over every excuse I could muster for not going, he insisted I join them and a group of friends at their home for Christmas Dinner. That was one of the best Christmases I have ever had. Peter quickly became a treasured and life-long friend. I realized he was an exceptional man, but his reaction to cancer has revealed a person of depth and courage I had not known before. He has a gift for writing that is extraordinary. His ability to engage in introspection about himself, his family, his life and his future are expressed in philosophical and humorous ways seen in few people. He has humbled and inspired me in ways he cannot imagine, and I am at a loss for words to adequately convey my feelings to him and for him in all that he has given me through his adversity. He truly is a living example of what I regard as “courage” in the finest and best sense of the word.

Nothing casts the issue of courage into sharp relief more than war. I was introduced to war and death at an early age during World War II. I cannot imagine anything more courageous than a young man landing on a beach, or huddling in a trench or a foxhole with everything to live for, waiting to be ordered or volunteering to rise up and face an almost certain death. To this very day, I am haunted by the memory of two of my Dad’s buddies who never came home from the war. Chuck Downey was little more than a boy when he joined the Marine Corps. I can still see his strawberry blond hair, his freckled face and the blue eyes of his Irish ancestry. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. He was killed on Iwo Jima. Bill Gay was a dark haired, gentle and quiet guy with a big smile, who joined the Navy and went down with a submarine in the South Pacific, never to surface again. Death was a mystery to me, but the intervening years have sharpened my perception of the horrors he must have experienced in the last throes of his life.

Just because those of later generations who were to become the victims of the gargantuan egos of Lyndon B. Johnson & Co and their pack of lies, and the evil and calculated deception of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cadre of cowardly neocons does not diminish the courage manifest in those who lost their lives in their wars. They faced, and continue to face, the same odds in the game of life and death. No matter how misplaced it might have been, they gave their life and limb out of a sense of patriotism; something that has never been operative in the moral fabric and character of the so-called “Commander in Chief” and his lieutenants operating in the shadows of their own dark agenda. Nothing should diminish their sacrifice just because of the sheer evil of those who planned and orchestrated their mortal demise.

Once in a while each of us should take the time to visit a military cemetery, alone, just for the experience of reflecting for a brief time on what real courage is all about. There is something about the vastness and stillness of those hallowed places that gives pause and reflection as to what we are all about. In the final analysis, could we have faced up to the challenges of their short and valiant lives? I don’t pay much attention to memorials erected to those who were the architects of war, for the true heroes are those who lie beneath our feet, row upon row, as far as the eye can see, and who faced the horrors perpetrated by those who sealed their fate.

On Memorial Day of 1956, as a young Navy man, I recall being in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, standing at the foot of the grave of Ernie Pyle, a famous World War II journalist. I was humbled at knowing how insignificant I was compared to the man at whose grave I looked down upon. I vividly remember the warmth of the gentle trade winds, laced with the faint perfume of Plumeria, brushing against my face. It was as if Providence was telling me that, although they live in a different dimension, they still walk among us in that state of eternal youth waiting for their turn at the fullness of a life never to be realized.

When I am alone I sometimes think a lot about what courage and bravery are all about, and I wonder how I would stack up against those whose badge of honor is captured in the simple word, “courage.” Try as I might to conclude otherwise, I doubt that I would have passed muster. I stow those thoughts away to be reflected upon another day, and I get on with my life, such as it is ………


Cowboy Bob
February 17, 2008