When I was a little girl growing up in small town USA, we had 4th of July parades and proudly waved the American flag. Fireworks followed a sweaty day of three-leg races and hot dogs, carnival games and lemonade. Laying on blankets looking up at the sky the idea that in a few short years the country I loved would be gone wasn’t even an inkling of possibility.

Life in the 50s was full of promise. The men were home and seemed fixated on making a better world, on building, creating, renewing.

Dad flew a bomber in Africa, Italy, Germany, completing more missions than many who weren’t so lucky. When he returned stateside after the war, he wouldn’t talk about his time in the sky, the men whose lives he saved, the many medals in boxes wrapped in tissue paper in Mom’s cedar chest. He wasn’t a hero, not in his eyes. He did what he had to do, what he and 16 million men and women (350,000) did. Some came home. Some didn’t.

After the war, what was important was leaving something behind that no matter how hard they worked, would never make up for the lives they had taken, the men, women and children, they had harmed. War is like that. Even with good reason, even when doing one’s duty, killing others takes a toll. Mankind was not designed as a killing machine, was not created for cruelty, for hate, to cause pain, to hurt and maim other living beings.

The boys and girls of the 40s fought because they loved their country, and loved freedom even more. Freedom was under fire in much of Europe. Fascism (what we call authoritarianism today) was taking over. People were dying, hiding in cellars and attics, cruelly abused, targeted and tortured. Those with the greatest fear, or the greatest alliance with the power play, turned in their neighbors for fear of being targeted too, of being next, in their desire to live one more day, or to prove their allegiance.

Fear is a powerful ally of evil. It comes in many forms, most not recognized while under their influence. Fascism was quickly spreading from Germany, and Italy, and Japan, to occupied Hungary, Poland, France, Spain, Greece, Russia.

A good friend escaped Hungary, and when no other countries would let them in, landed in China. It was their last hope, the last place that still had open doors, doors that closed shortly after. They survived in the slums of Shanghai, but barely.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad lately, wondering how he would feel about what’s happening in the US right now. I think he’d be happy to be dead, or what we call dead. I feel him more today than I have since he passed so many years ago.

He is still here, like so many warriors of the past. We are not alone, nor could we ever be. Freedom lovers, or said another way, lovers of love and compassion, across the ages are right here, standing next to us, holding us, in full recognition of the cost of resistance, cheering us on, supporting our every breath. They give us the heart to stand for one another, the resilience to remain standing when others try to knock us down, the breath to take in the suffering of others, to see the pain that causes them to act in such cruel ways.

We think we are limited to those courageous people standing next to us, those we can see, but that is not so. Our support is legions, is infinite, is alive with the endless power of love and compassion. When we simply allow that what we see is but the tip of an eternal iceberg, we are the breath of gods, rippling across eternity.

Image: Dad 1942