Aprons for PTSD

My father loved me. My father was not kind to me. He grew up in abject poverty, his childhood marred by abuse and neglect. Like so many boys from small towns in the Missouri Ozarks, the military was a shining path to what he hoped would be a better life, so he joined young.

In many ways, it was a good path for him. Daddy was crazy-smart and a hard worker, two traits that served his career well. Although, his stubborn streak did leave him scrubbing a latrine floor with a toothbrush on more than one occasion. I’m sure that same stubborn streak is what kept him alive when he was captured and kept in a cage in Vietnam, too.

Daddy always had itchy feet; he never could stay in one place long. We’re alike in that. Thanks to his time in the military, he saw the world - and his daughters had people in their life of all cultures and colors. Being an Air Force brat expanded my world and shaped who I am today. Growing up, I was deeply proud of those Air Force roots.

As an adult, while still proud, I do sometimes wonder what my life might have been like had my father not been wrestling with untreated PTSD my entire life.

He was a hard man who demanded perfection from his daughters. Somehow, I always fell short. I was too loud, asked too many questions, and generally managed to push his buttons with my very existence. It took a lot of years for me to realize that all of that had less to do with my own failings than it did with the scars on his own soul.

My father was a broken man before the military got a hold of him, but the things he saw—and did—in Vietnam changed him irreparably long before I came into existence.

PTSD wasn’t a conversation in the late 60s and early 70s. Troops coming back from tours weren’t welcomed or even given basic mental healthcare, but rather spit on and called baby killers. Whatever one’s stance on war and Vietnam in particular, surely we can agree that greeting had an impact on these men, their lives, and their families.

With their PTSD undiagnosed and untreated, they were left to cope on their own. Many, if not most, turned to alcohol to numb the pain.

As a teenager, I didn’t know the statistics. I just knew that of my friends, those of us with dads who drank too much and knocked us around a bit, all were Vietnam vets. (If you’re curious, it’s estimated that 30% of Vietnam Veterans have PTSD and of those, 60 - 80% have alcohol use disorders.)

When I was 18, I was a waitress and short order cook at a little greasy spoon diner. I had a random conversation with a happy, well-adjusted vet and commented that it felt like he was the first of his kind I’d met. He said it was because he was stationed in Australia after the war, where he’d received mental health care. I can’t speak to the validity of the statement, but it stuck with me.

My dad never got any kind of care. Not mental health, not treatment or reimbursement when he got cancer from Agent Orange exposure, and no support when years of night terrors and heavy drinking drove him to dementia.

We begged for help from the VA. We were told by one doctor to pray harder, but no real help ever came. The years between his first diagnosis and actually getting him into a home were pure hell.

Every time we’d think we’d found all of the guns, he’d find or buy another. You’d know you missed one when he started shooting at you for being a stranger on his lawn. And, may I just say, it’s a special kind of triggering to try to take car keys away from the man who once dangled you by your throat over a flight of stairs.

He’d get so drunk he couldn’t walk and then get into that pickup truck and try to drive it home from “the V". That man got in accidents, waived his gun in strangers’ faces, and got away with it every time because he had a Vietnam vet bumper sticker and the sheriff would let him off with a warning. When my sister and I finally hid the truck, we were told by the VA that we’d deprived him of his personal property and had to return it.

We lived in constant fear that he’d kill our mother, one of us, or some innocent bystander. Meanwhile, the VA tells us to pray harder and give him back his keys.

Then he started falling, and they accused my mother of abuse. My mother, who is five foot tall if she stands up real straight.

We couldn’t afford private care and he refused to go willingly anyway. It was probably the third hospitalization and a broken leg that finally got us the paperwork we needed to have him put in a facility. He got out and was found wandering down the highway twice before we got the paperwork we needed to place him in a locked unit.

Even with Medicare, the cost of his care took all of my mother’s income and left her with nothing to live on. By the time we finally got him into a VA home (after phone calls with our senators and the governor), she’d lost everything. There are more veterans in need of care than there are beds for them.

When we asked a VA doctor what happened if we ran out of money before they found a bed, he shrugged and asked, “why do you think there are so many vets living on the streets?”

My dad and I worked hard at building a relationship when I was in my twenties and thirties. A lot of healing happened and we actually grew quite close.

And then came the descent into the hell that is dementia and all of that was stripped away, leaving huge, ugly gashes in my soul. Wounds I thought had healed were laid bare.

I get phone calls from him sometimes, begging me to come get him. Sometimes he says he’s lost. Before we found a place for him, back in the terrifying days of him driving Lord-knows-where, he’d call when he’d get lost and I’d get in my car and go find him. (Or go round up the donkeys he’d accidentally set free…) Now, I just talk to him. I crack jokes that he’s in trouble if I’m the only adult he can find to help. We talk until he’s calmed down. I never say I’ll come get him, but I also don’t say I can’t. I think trying to ground him in reality is cruel and the best thing we can do is talk, so that’s what we do.

They tell me he asks for me. Usually when I visit, he thinks I’m my middle sister because my hair is darker than it used to be. Sometimes, he doesn’t know me at all. I’ve gained weight and I look tired. Half the time I look in a mirror and I don’t know me, either, so I can’t say I blame him. The Heather he knew is gone, and I don’t know how to get her back, for either of our sakes.

That said, I saw him last week and he cried when he saw me walking down the sidewalk with Fred the Super Mutt. From his smile, I knew right away that he knew me. Those visits, when I actually get a glimpse of my daddy, they’re priceless.

I was such a patriotic child and young woman. I still love this country, deeply. But I can’t help wondering, however selfishly, how my life might have been different if the government hadn’t used up my father and then thrown him out like a piece of trash.

I struggle not to let bitterness take hold. After the last few years especially, it has truly been a struggle.

I run a women’s group on Facebook called The Perch. It’s a place for women to stop flitting and simply be. We share jokes, talk about our days, and support each other in this hot mess called life. One of the things we do is a monthly interview called Difference Makers. That’s been a serious step outside of my comfort zone, both being responsible for conducting the interview (which is harder than being interviewed, in my opinion), and going on film once a month because I’m so flipping self conscious about myself these days. (Trying not to be because vanity is never an attractive trait.)

ANYWAY, thanks to a very dear friend setting it up, this month’s interview is with Amy Drake, a woman who truly humbles me. When she lost her son to PTSD, rather than also losing the battle to bitterness, she looked for a way to help others. From that, Aprons for PTSD Awareness was born and in the years following, she’s made and sold over 1,000 aprons to raise funds for those fighting PTSD.

You can see the interview in the Perch and you can check out her Facebook group here.

For the entire month of June, I’m running a giveaway, hosted by BookBetter. Entering is easy, and two lucky winners will get an apron made by Amy and a copy of Saving Jason by Kate Anslinger. Years ago, when I was closer to suicidal than anyone might have guessed, Kate asked me to read a draft of her debut novel. That book left me ugly crying and it, quite honestly, saved my life. It was inspired by someone dear to her who’d struggled with PTSD and I can’t recommend the book highly enough. Seeing how that book has touched others since its release has been truly awe-inspiring.

Regardless of one’s political affiliation, stance on war, or any of the other things we like to square off about these days, PTSD is real. It effects real men and women and their families. Right, wrong, or indifferent, the government is not meeting the need it’s created. We can either stand in the gap, or watch as these men and women - and their families - fall into it.

I, for one, want to take a page from Amy Drake and look for ways I can make a difference.