Celebrating Memorial Day

My birthday weekend is Memorial Day weekend — which means nothing when you are growing up abroad, but in US High School you’ll learn quickly that you can’t have a birthday party — because everyone is travelling with their families for the holiday. Then, I joined the Army, all of a sudden, Memorial Day is no longer about sun and barbeques and family and the start of summer. Memorials mean something entirely different to us.

The last birthday I really enjoyed was over a decade ago. We were at Fort Huachucha, off at the border of Mexico and the US, learning to be spies or something. Nobody could go home because we were in training, so we barbequed at our hotels and ate cake and I quietly turned 23 — with a bunch of young Lieutenants who like me, even though wearing the uniform, still didn’t have an inkling of what this holiday was about.

Next, I spent my 24th birthday in Afghanistan. After that, I cancelled my birthday for nearly a decade, and when I did dare to try to celebrate, it was an event pockmarked by trepidation and survivor’s guilt. This Tuesday, I’m turning 34, I have a big book I’m writing on the line, complete with escaping a cult, horrible birthdays, tales of friends lost to war, and of the rest of us who’ve struggled to go on in the aftermath. I’ve been forced to bring out memories I thought I’d put to rest and deal with them, finally. With my birthday, with Memorial Day, with celebrating, with all of it.

On May 25th, 2011, I was going through a major age crisis — hopefully my last. As a 24-year-old Lieutenant deployed to Afghanistan, losing hope with what we were doing over there, dodging toxic leadership and dealing with a culture of rape and violence towards women that I was just expected to accept, questioning if I was wasting my life away, and wondering why I’d even chosen the military path.

I’d also volunteered for combat, why not? A group of six women began training with a great group of guys, led by a skilled First Lieutenant John Runkle. Contrary to what I expected — which was for them to be extremely unhappy with being forced to ‘babysit females’ in combat zones — they were friendly and welcoming. They gave us a bit of a run through of, “So you think you want to be in the Infantry? Alright, let’s see if you have what it takes.” The ‘battle drills’ began. By the end of the first day, my knees were black and blue from dropping to my knees on packed sand and gravel, I had cactus spikes so deeply embedded in my palms I thought they would come out the other side, and the reputation of being able to sprint faster in my boots, full body armor and helmet, under cover of darkness than Lieutenant Runkle could wearing nothing but his regular uniform. The rest of the team got a kick out of that, and, to his credit, so did my friend John.

During our first meal, John was stretched out on the ground next to me, grabbing a bite of an MRE, something that invariably tasted more like cardboard than like sustenance, and I ended up seated nearby. Though we were both Lieutenants, there was no confusion about who was boss. John radiated confidence, his men listened to him and followed him into danger — no questions. I was just another lowly member of the team, a woman-shaped tool, sent in for a specific purpose — to help show the locals that we respected their culture, though I am not sure that at the time we did.

But to John, nobody was just ‘another member of the team’. We were individuals, we were important, and apparently he was looking for a way around that pesky ‘unquestioning obedience’ thing. He realized that he had been granted an interesting tool for a combat commander, a completely new perspective — us women, minds unsullied by any of that pesky combat training. We just might be able to help him see new things. “What makes you different?” How could I tell him that he was opening a can of worms with that question?

I know this one! I answered honestly. He did not mind, and he did not judge. He did not even say, “Wait a minute, you escaped one cult, and then you joined another?” the tongue-in-cheek truth I was asked nearly every time I told someone a part of my back-story. He just looked at me and said, “Gosh, we need to schedule time for some more conversations, a lot more. You must have some interesting and useful insights”.

Before the end, we’d had some of those important conversations — conversations about leadership, culture, group psychology, motivation, combat, and each person’s uniqueness and ability to contribute to the whole, as an individual. We talked about how this small group of women might change the face of one of the oldest and largest organizations in our country, the US Army, and how he felt lucky to have a front row seat, and hopefully a rice-grain of influence. We talked, laughed, trained, and fought together. He celebrated my promotion with me, told me I had what it took to go all the way, that the Army didn’t know what they had. He begged me to stay in and make them see it. When I was talking to him, I wanted to promise him that I would — for myself and for all the other women, too.

It’s impossible to make a birthday in a war zone seem like a celebration, but we always tried. At Mama Mia’s, a pizza joint on the Kandahar Airfield Boardwalk — a kilometer long circle of plywood built over a flat dust bowl, with various shops along the way — I celebrated with friends and coworkers over slices of not bad pizza and awful imitation wine. I’d hoped that John would be able to make it, but a mission recall tether prevented him from joining in that night. Before he went to sleep, he wrote a brief message on my Facebook wall, wishing me a happy birthday. It was the last thing he’d do on social media.

Then we did not get to have any more conversations. John went home in a 6-foot box, with five of our team members and others still — all of whom he’d tried to save. Ten people gone, and John, leaving me behind, and way ahead of schedule, his dreams blown to pieces along with his body. How do you even mourn when your heart has been shattered? You don’t, not really. You just go back to war. Keep marching, keep surviving, keep asking other people that question “What makes you different?” Keep connecting, keep suffering, keep losing. Keep gaining perspective. Keep wondering, “Can we still change the world?”

At the Ramp Ceremony, still Memorial Day weekend back home, the sun wouldn’t stop shining, for just one damn minute, to let us mourn in peace. Hundreds and hundreds of service men and women stood, lined perfectly in rows, shoulder to shoulder, heads bowed and tears falling. Those of us with a personal connection to the deceased were standing together in the front row, trying not break rank and grab onto each other for support.

Even now, as I try to write the story, I only see and remember the fragments — the unforgettable sounds I heard myself, spliced with images that seared into brain from the first-hand accounts of those who were there. There was the first responder kit of our medic, SSG Mills chew can, I know he would have had one on him. Specialist Patton’s last wave towards the rescue team coming towards him, before he lay down in the prone position behind his rifle, and squarely on top of a hidden bomb. The horrible silence that interrupted John’s last radio call, as he got down next to Patton, calmly relaying information up to the Lieutenant Colonel, his commander, leading the helicopter rescue mission overhead.

And the survivor’s guilt. In the corner of the TOC where I stood, I fell to my knees, beseeching deities from across the globe that I didn’t believe in, just in case one of them was real and happened to be tuning into my frequency, “please, don’t let it be my friends, don’t let it be my guys, don’t let it be John.”

A wave of guilt swept over me. Because the numbers had been coming in for hours. Six dead. Eight dead. Nine. Ten humans, gone! They were all our guys. If they weren’t my friends, then they’d be someone else’s friends, husbands, brothers, sons, fathers.

As I walked into my office, face red from hours of sobbing, people told me over and over again.

“I’m so glad you weren’t there! That none of you girls were with them today.”

I wanted to punch them all in the face, along with everyone I ran into who kept repeating the same sentiment. All I could think was that I couldn’t think of a single thing that made my life worth a cent more than theirs — any of them.

When we got home from Afghanistan, we all tried to settle into our new normal — the normal of being soldiers who’d been to war, who’d seen and caused death, and who’d not been successful at the only thing we really care about when we are out there — it’s not the mission, it’s not the Commander in Chief or the Army or the damned country, we only care about bringing the brothers and sisters in arms home, just the ones to our left and our rights, front and backs. We’d failed. And we’d be changed forever.

I met his mother at the first Memorial Ceremony for all our guys. She knew exactly who I was, I was significant to her for the worst of reasons — the last piece she could see of her son, could hang onto before all the condolences came rolling in, was his brief message, “Happy Birthday, Daniella, hope you enjoy it the best you can. Sorry I couldn’t be there.” I was sorry too.

It’s taken me a decade to address the survivor’s guilt, the pain, the longing for each of them — for what could have been in lives taken way too soon, in a mission I wasn’t sure I believed in. I changed my birthday outright, creating the unbirthday when I partied with friends who were still alive. Memorial Day was for the dead, for the dark, for the memories. Memorial Day was only to be spent with other veterans — those who’d once been innocent too, but who’s stories all now had an after, after they’d lost someone to war, or maybe to the demons that came for them back home.

But the thing about having a birthday on Memorial Day weekend is that, no matter where you are, or how far you try to run and hide, that damn sun won’t stop shining on you — trying to make it all better. Trying to make it liveable and even, maybe, beautiful. Trying to prove that this America, this flawed-country, this place that has failed so many in so many ways, still has some promise, still has a lot of good, if we are willing to fight for it.

Despite the politicization of Memorial Day, of politics, of the us versus them mindset that we’ve fallen into in this country, and how much I hate it all, I’m finding my way back to celebrating Memorial Day. Yes, I said it — celebrating. This place that we’re at right now, where everything is a battle, and even how we honor our nation’s most honored dead is a tool for politicians and regular people alike to jab at each other — this isn’t the country that our loved ones died for. They died for the promise of better — John stood for tolerance, for love, for honor, integrity, and loyalty to his guys, and his goddamn girls, too.

Every year until now, I’ve spent the days leading up to Memorial Day reading John’s — sobbing, hurting, but never forgetting. But last year it was gone, his note, his final words. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I guess the algorithm doesn’t go back that far, or maybe his family took things down. Finally finding closure. It was so gone, so blank, and I couldn’t let that stand.

So I wrote my own memories of them, all of them. I went to that dark place that I’d always avoided, and I tried to bring in some of that Memorial Day sunshine. I hope that one day soon, many of you will read about them.

I’m not fixed, I’m not whole, and I never will be. I will always be a veteran, one with an after. But this year, I’m going to try. Enjoying sun, friends, family and bbq on one of the first weekends of summer is part of what the American way of life is about; And sacrificing for the American Way of life is what we all signed up for, and what far too many have died for. And I think it’s okay to be confused, to be sad, torn, broken, questioning everything about our country, but to still celebrate our friends — what they lived for, instead of what they died for.

If I could have a birthday wish this year it would be that Americans set aside their pettiness, their extremism and their guilt-shaming of each other for a whole weekend. Dedicate it to a veteran, and their family, read about her or him, who they were in the world, you might even reach out to their families with words of comfort and remembrance. Then go party with your loved ones, the way that those American heros would be doing if they still could. Give them the gift of immortality, their families the gift of knowing that they are being celebrated, and enjoy the American Way of Life that they died to preserve. And then go fight for it.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is an American author and TEDx Speaker. Daniella has been breaking through barriers and challenging authority figures since her earliest childhood memories growing up in the horrifying Children of God Cult and on through her service and deployment to war twice. Daniella served as part of the first group of women who integrated into deliberate combat arms missions back in 2011 and has since spent the majority of her time leading in veteran service organizations to try and help folks heal and find their own definition of success after their service.

Daniella is married to the world’s best special operations helicopter pilot (retired) and speaks primarily in Brazilian Portuguese with her daughter, who sasses her back in three languages. Daniella is currently at work on her memoir, Uncultured. She can be found speaking speaking truth to power, irritating vetbros and stamping out the kyriarchy on Twitter @daniellamyoung.