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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

5 Years....

Its been 5 years since the world lost a great man.  5 years removed from a day I will never forget.  I relive that day most days of my life, and there really isn't a day that goes by that I don't at least think about it.  Be it a strange throbbing in my thigh, or I happen to read the bracelet I wear for the umpteenth million time.  As this time of  year approaches its difficult for me.  This was a major turning point in my life, a point that tested me in ways that I still don't fully understand.  SGM Brad Conner was the epitome of what a soldier should be.  He led from the front, he cared about his troops, he was a genuine person.  I only knew Brad for just about a year.  But in that year he taught me a lot.  He showed me what its like to be a true leader, a respectable person to those who look up to you for guidance.  And over the past 5 years I have had the blessing to meet his family, to find out why this man got up everyday and did what he did.  He was very good about keeping his family and work apart.  Which was a blessing and a curse for them, as I have found.  I only hope that by me being there for the short time that I had with him, that I can enlighten them on the Brad Conner that I knew.  All the while they are showing me more about him that most would never see.  Its been helpful in my road to recovery being apart of their healing as well.  The physical wounds are gone or scarred over by now, but the mental ones are as fresh as the day it all happened.  There are other things that have added to this over the years but that day will be the one that sticks out to me in my mind as the one that was the game changer.  I saw things that day that scared me.. I saw things that amazed me.. Its amazing what a situation like that will do to people and it really brings it down to the primal level.. Who will come out ahead.  People that I would have never guessed as being a squared away soldier, someone who I deemed as a "shit bag" because of previous actions, came out shining above the rest.  People that should have been in "Charge" so con-fuddled and scared that they didn't know how to do their job.  Boggled the mind.  I sit here today knowing that I couldn't have done any more than I did... yet I wish I could have.  Rest in Peace Brother.  De Oppresso Liber