An Untold Story

His house sat empty for years–but, for as long as I could remember, he and his wife lived there, next door to my parents. He was a World War I veteran and he sometimes came over to visit with my dad.

He lived quietly and he died quietly, with nobody taking much notice except his children and grandchildren and, of course, Dad, because Dad missed those visits.

Although he must have had many stories to tell, I don’t think he ever told them and I never asked him. Why didn’t I? Now, that opportunity is gone and I’ll never know about his childhood or what life was like for him in the early part of the twentieth century. I’ll never be able to see the Great War through his eyes or learn about the valor and the dangers he experienced. Did he leave his hometown on the train that once took many soldiers off to war? Did he sail away to a foreign nation on a ship, seeing the great expanse of the Atlantic for the first time? What hopes and dreams did he leave behind? What dangers and horrors did he experience while he fought for what he believed in?

I’ll never know the answer to any of these questions and the loss is mine. I wish I had asked him, gone over to his house to talk to him. Now, that empty house is being looked at again. The yard is being cleaned up and the house is evidently getting ready for a new family to live there. Whoever they are, I wish them well. I wish them peace and contentment, the things I’m sure the first occupant wished for. I hope, in the later years of his life, he found them.