The night before my brother-in-law Sgt. John F. Collins’ funeral, we gathered for dinner at Bubba’s in Killeen, Texas. John died suddenly June 1 at the age of 72 at his Copperas Cove home.
Eight of us squeezed into a large booth, and John’s longtime friend, Army veteran Dan Motill, ended up sitting across from me. Motill had known John for more than 30 years.
I immediately began thinking of him as “Lt. Dan,” after the Gary Sinise character in Forrest Gump. When I mentioned this, he laughed.
“Lt. Dan” was sporting a “Veterans for Trump” ball cap. Most folks who know me know I lean a bit more to the left than Dan. So there we were, two people who don’t see eye-to-eye politically, strangers sharing a table in a noisy Texas restaurant.
I suppose I could have made assumptions. Dan could have made assumptions, too. We could have retreated into the safe camps we all seem to carry around with us these days. It was a bit awkward, for me at least.
Instead, I did what the journalist and writer in me almost always does with people I don’t know.
I asked questions.
Because underneath every opinion, every slogan, every ball cap, there is still a story. How did Dan know John? Where was he from? What had his life been?
Gradually, the hat became less important than the man wearing it.
Dan told me he first met John at Fort Hood after Dan had trained as a combat engineer. John wanted to know if Dan played softball and whether he was any good. That was the beginning of a friendship that lasted for decades.
After four years in the Army, Dan went to college and earned a degree in business and political science, according to his LinkedIn profile. Born and raised in Poughkeepsie, in New York’s Hudson Valley, he did his basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri before being assigned to Fort Hood.
He later spent nearly three decades traveling the world as a maintenance and reliability consultant, working in several industries and seeing places I have only read about. He continues to work today with Houston as his home base.
Bali and New Zealand are his favorite places to visit, though he is not especially fond of Europe. The stories he told me illustrated both his conservative roots and his curiosity about other people and cultures.
As it turned out, there was a lot more to Dan than the slogan on his hat.
He was the veteran who would show up the next day with a worn softball and a long-neck, unopened bottle of Budweiser to place in his best friend’s casket because both had meaning for them. He was also the person who made sure there was a Texas-style barbecue spread for John’s family and friends after the funeral, in a place where they could share memories of good times. (Yes, it was the local American Legion post in Killeen.)
These were small things, but not small at all when chosen for a man’s funeral by someone who knew him.
I did not know John well, even though I had been his sister-in-law for more than 40 years. When I first married into the Collins Clan, I think John was living in Germany with his own family. Later, they moved to Texas. He did not visit very often, but when he did, it was always in the context of the larger family gatherings. I do know we saw the world very differently. He was not always an easy person to get along with.
For the funeral, we gathered at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery with John’s flag-draped casket, carried by six soldiers from the hearse. An Army chaplain led the service. “Taps” was played. My husband Bill and Dan were among those service members who saluted John’s casket. Both had tears in their eyes.
Standing there, watching the flag being folded, watching my husband salute, watching John’s friend wipe away tears, I understood again that no person should be reduced to a cap, a political opinion, a hard history, or even their worst characteristics.
The fences were still there, of course–politics, distance, family history, old wounds. But for a little while, gathered around John’s casket, they seemed smaller than the solemn work of saying goodbye.
That does not mean harm disappears. It does not mean we pretend every relationship was peaceful or every wound was healed.
But if my faith means anything, it has to mean John is loved by God.
Perhaps that is where we begin again–not by pretending hurt never happens, but by remembering that every person’s story is more complicated than we know.
SQUIBS 