Читать книгу Never Leave Your Dead - Diane Cameron - Страница 11

PREFACE

This is the story of Donald Watkins, the man my mother married when she was seventy years old. He was a Marine, a murderer, and a former mental patient. At first I wondered, How could she marry this man? Today I understand why, because long after his death, I love Donald too.

But it wasn’t love at first sight. Two years after Donald’s death I was given a box of his papers, and my search for the truth of this tragic man began. I journeyed long and far. I met amazing people in unusual places. I had to learn their stories so I could finally understand Donald.

Donald was not the only one with problems. Our family had many challenges, and over the generations we took trauma and compounded it. But to my great surprise, as I undertook this pilgrimage to understand him, I was changed.

We were not a military family, so I had to confront the misconceptions and stereotypes I had about those who make a commitment to military life. I had to search archives and libraries and I had to find experts to translate the facts of Donald’s life, encountering revelations every step along the way.

I found documents, reports, records, and ephemera: menus, baseball programs, bits of old film, and parts of American history I never learned in school. Also, I found teachers. My most important teachers were a group of courageous men who were old, sometimes deaf or blind, but who had an abundance of fortitude, resilience, humor, and honor. These were United States China Marines.

I learned two important lessons from my teachers—both the experts on trauma and the men who lived it: First, trauma is not the terrible thing that happens to you, but what is left inside you because it happened. And second, if something terrible happens to you, that is not the story. How you survive and how you love and are loved again is the story.

As you read this book you will see that the story is told out of order, because I learned Donald’s story out of order, but also because trauma—whether from war or crime or abuse—always and tragically leaves us out of order. You will also see I have included scenes that, to the best of my understanding, represent insights into what Donald experienced. I built these scenes from conversations with Donald, with my mother, with other China Marines, with survivors of mental institutions, and with those who directly participated in Donald’s liberation.