DEROS Plus 50 Years, I Do Plus 52.

18Aug2020, Pasadena CA 

Michael Sedano

It was a Tuesday in Los Angeles, Wednesday in Korea. August 18, 1970, a day like any other day, for many. Me, 18AUG70, was DEROS, return from overseas day. At Ft. Lewis, Washington, an E-4 clerk enviously hands me a 9 X 10” manila envelope with my DD-214, cash to get home, and re-up information. I spent the money on a bus ride down the coast, I still have the DD-214—it’s the only proof anyone has of being a soldier. I did give a second thought to the re-up concept. The Army had been FTA, fun, travel, adventure.

Does it seem that long to you? I’ve been home for fifty years as of today.

Barbara and I lived apart on our first wedding anniversary. I woke that morning 6000 miles away, on the world’s highest anti-aircraft missile site, drinking in the spectacular view, taking inventory. Barbara was organizing her second year teaching English to high school kids, wondering if my birthday card arrived in time.

We married on my birthday in 1968. I joked so I’d never forget; in truth, my birthday present to last all the days of my life. This August 31 marks our 52d anniversary, my 75th. I’m taking inventory of everything every day. 

Barbara won’t remember.

Barbara’s Alzheimer’s Dementia blossomed in 2017 and has “progressed” according to the model. She no longer owns many facts; she doesn’t know her age, I sing “76 trombones.” She asks if we own this house and I tell her how she bought it when I was on a business trip. That makes her happy and she decides she’d like to stay here. There was a time last year she didn’t recognize me, talked about Michael who’d visited her that morning. Michael can take it, even when Barbara went to live in a sequestered Memory Unit for six months. She DEROSed in November last year and is here to stay. 

I’m cleaning out the detritus of time that gathers over a lifetime, stuff that followed us from domicile to domicile. 

The other day I discovered a cache of costume jewelry. Barbara’s style was large pins and earrings, hummingbirds, insects, and reptiles. These fill the long-stored cardboard box. Some I bought her, some she picked up on a vacation. She wasn’t an inveterate shopper but she knew how to buy stuff she liked. I can't avoid that past tense, she was.

I showed her the silver Victorian medusa pin that had been a favorite. Barbara says the pin is so pretty, she wonders where it came from?

Fifty years ago, I came home from Korea and the Army, still a newlywed. Married, honeymoon, Draft notice, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ft. Ord. No sweatie-da, we would start all over again when I got discharged. So we did. So we have. So it goes.

Happy Anniversary, Barbara. If only you remembered.