Day Shift — Understanding The Struggles Of My Father

"One day, if you're lucky, you'll understand"

My father was in World War II, in the Pacific Theater. He never spoke about his time there, but there was evidence of it in the way he was with us, with the world, with himself. And I've been writing about my father, and I just want to read a little thing that I wrote recently.

Dad is coughing. It's bad. “Al?” He keeps coughing, his hand pressed to his mouth. "You okay?" From the kitchen, my mother looks worried, she’s edging toward the dining room. Still busy coughing, Dad can't answer. He can't speak. He can't even gesture. His brother, Uncle Tom—they farmed together—answers for him, "He's okay. Just give him a minute." Tom was in the war too, but in the Navy - communications - stationed in India. You can tell by the tattoo on his forearm, a palm tree above a banner that reads India.

We all wait, holding our breath in sympathy for my father. Finally, he stops, his face red. His shoulders dropping in relief. He's a little shaky, but he pulls in a full breath. Then he opens his hand to show us what he has caught. He looks surprised, like, "Can you believe it?" It's a piece of shrapnel—ugly, dark, twisted lead—that has worked its way through his body to the lungs and now has been expelled. Dad stands up, takes a tissue from the box on the telephone counter, wraps it up, and tosses it into the garbage underneath.

I recently read up on where my father was stationed. It was in Okinawa. It was some of, if not the worst, fighting in the Pacific toward the end of World War II. It was the last island before the island of Japan itself. And the Japanese there were making a final stand. And on Okinawa, nearly a quarter of a million people were killed over the course of 83 days, and my father was one of the 50,000 U.S. casualties there. He was blown up, got filled with shrapnel, spent a year in an army hospital. Everyone he knew, except one other guy, died.

For the longest time, I had a problem with my father. It was hard to communicate with him. He was shut down, and he seemed not to want to have much to do with me. I took that personally. Now, I'm seeing what he was carrying with himself every moment of every day, without the benefit of the spiritual tools I have, of the different modes of therapy that are available to us today, just of the recognition that war is hell and you don't have to walk through the aftermath of it alone.

You know, in World War I they had shell shock, in Vietnam they had PTSD, and in World War II, they had "Just zip it up. Don’t talk about it. Come home and act normal. Try to raise a family."

I see today that he really did the best he knew how to do, and it was a lot. There was always food on the table. There was always a roof over my head. It wasn’t touchy-feely, wasn’t even loving and kind some of the times. But he was carrying so much, and he was still able to take care of us along with it. And for that, I'm just really grateful.

I hope that if anyone has a problem with anyone in their life — you don't have to forgive them, you don't have to let them off the hook, but at least understand that they are human. And it's a given that they’re doing it as well as they know how to do it. And one day, if you're lucky, you'll understand them in a way that will allow you to take a full breath and see them as just one more soul doing the best they know how to do from one end of life to the other.

Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

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Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and co-authored the book Art That Pays.