My Irish Friend

Patrick

I sat alone on the old wooden swing,

caressed by the autumn breeze as it  washed across my face.

It feels empty now without 

 the sturdy shoulder

                                                 relaxed beside me

                               of the man I now call friend.
It was Viet Nam that brought our lives together,
                             but it was our  hearts that made us friends.

Patrick was an Irishman,

                              who came  to war to see the world

                                                    and he did.

He saw the anguish of war

                                but he soon looked past the pain

and saw the children of war....

              and love came in the form of tiny hands and feet

and eyes , the depth of which would sear a hole in Patrick's heart.

 These orphans of Viet Nam, held close and sheltered by

the Sisters and Soldiers,

                                not hungry,

not left alone to fend for them selves.

They knew love,  They knew joy

and play as if the world around them

                would one day be free from rockets and bullets.

Patrick became a father, brother , friend to the Children of war.

He stood with them.  He taught them and sometimes

looking past the frightful fear of war...just held them.

He balanced duty to the American cause,

                                                  a duty of choice not birth,

with compassion and love for the Children of war.

We met in a horrible war,

                     but because of Patrick I will forever be changed.

He shared the children of war and I became a better person.

He unleashed a compassionate heart

                                              and took me to a place.

a place of peace in a world of fear and uncertainty.

It became a time to pour out feelings

and  surround those loving children

                             with our arms and our heart

and give the gift of feeling wanted in a world filled with

 rage and useless  battles and struggles to exist.

I came home.

Home to wife and child and began my life.

But the thought of war would soon return and the haunting of

those children's hungry eyes filled my soul.

In silence, I cried.

In silence, I feared their unknown being.

Battles end but mothers and fathers remain absent to these

            Holy Children of War.

My only hope was that God would lift them to the sky

               and bless them and make them

 The children of love.

I lost Patrick, or Paddy they called him.  Lost him as the war

ended for me.

But the burden of memory called me to search him out.

I found Patrick.

Not broken by the weight  of war

but living and loving and moving on in his father's homeland.

Home found him, and soon so did wife and child

                                                   and love healed his heart.

Little did I ever hope or dream that in finding this Irishman,

            cultures and experience a million miles apart,

Our souls would touch

                 and we would become more than friends,

more than brothers,

                 more in life than we deserve from God.

Soul friends are not ordinary,

                     they can not be defined.

Words can not explain.......only feelings of the heart.

Soul friends have no logic or reason.

                                                         They just are.

So now I set alone in my wooden swing and I celebrate.

One day....maybe just for a moment in time,

                        our hearts will touch again

and the conversation that we did not complete on

that Indiana summer day in the old wooden swing,

                                                                        will continue

and God will say

                                     Amen.