The Grief of a 6 Year Old Girl

Joe and his oldest daughter, Sharon

The Grief of a 6 year old Girl is Deeply Embedded in the Soul of a 73 year old Woman

My Uncle Joe O’Donnell died on October 13, 1951 on Heartbreak Ridge in Korea.   The sadness I still feel over this particular loss so many years ago- 67 years this October - has me perplexed.    I was only 6 years old at the time and I am a little surprised that it left such a permanent imprint on my heart.   I almost feel a wee bit of guilt, after all, this man was my Uncle and not my Father.   Shouldn’t it be his two daughters who are allowed to mourn for so long?   To be exact, Uncle Joe was my mother, Rita’s younger brother, and the only boy out of 6 children.   If this isn’t sad enough, he was only 29 years old when his life ebbed away on a foreign hill in a foreign land?   

So what do I often do when I am really perplexed?  I sit and write things down as a way to see what might be hidden inside.   Then I try to analyze what my own words are trying to tell me.   In delving back into my personal history, I seem to remember only bits and pieces, and the pieces I remember are heavily laden with emotions.  Actually it is the emotions I remember more clearly than the factual details.   Some of my memory, some of my emotion, is based on hearsay or what one might describe as family lore. 

Probably the first feeling I experienced about my Uncle’s death was a vague sense of dread - the nervous energy being projected by my mother and other family members when letters weren’t arriving home as expected.   No one was yet verbalizing the possibility of a reality much too painful to allow into full consciousness.   

The next thing I remember about this tragedy is being at birthday party in a little court up the street from my house in Brooklyn.   The birthday kid’s name was Kurt Branch, he was an only child, and he was a little older that my brother, Charlie.  His family had emigrated from Germany at the time of WW II, and his mother was a no-nonsense, strict, German woman, who scared the living daylights out of me.  There weren’t a lot of kids on our street - Interboro Parkway-  back in those days so, in spite of our wide range of age differences, all three of us kids were at the party.  My youngest sibling, Meg, wasn't born yet.   My father arrived at the house unexpectedly and spoke to Mrs. Branch in a serious, secretive manner -“off to one side”.   I don’t remember hearing words, I do however remember the catastrophic nature of my father’s tone and demeanor.  It was obvious to me that something bad, really bad, had happened.   My father asked Mrs. Branch if she could keep us at the party longer than previously scheduled.   I did not want to stay, I wanted to go with my father.  I knew at the core of my being, this was not the time to be “partying”.    I probably made a stink, maybe I even cried, and I remember Mrs. Branch slapping me.  Then I remember standing outside the house in the middle of the small court.  As a part of Kurt's birthday celebration, we were given curly streamers to throw up in the air and unwind.  It was probably one of the most incongruous things I have ever done in my life. 

The next thing I can remember about this time is kneeling and saying the rosary in the living room at my Aunt Marie and Uncle Joe’s apartment on Linden Street in the Bushwich section of Brooklyn.   I remember that the apartment was on the fifth floor and it wasn’t very big and the modest living room was filled with family members knelling together in prayer.  Specifically, I can see my grandmother O’Donnell's face.  She is the only one I see clearly.  I remember the Chinese art work hanging on the walls, things my Uncle brought back after WWII.  The feeling I experienced that day was comfort in the face of deep sadness.  It was good to be with the people I loved the most.

Another thing I remember is my mother walking around like one of the Stepford Wives in the semi-finished room in our basement.  She was trying her best to offer a little birthday celebration for Diane, Joe’s youngest daughter who just turned 3.   

I remember the funeral parlor on Bushwich Avenue, the closed casket, the American Flag, my Grandma crying, the kids running around.   Someone brought a bunch of us kids to get ice cream at a nearby Ice Cream Parlor.  I don’t remember who it was, maybe Uncle Bill?  

I remember the 21 gun salute at the Cypress Hills National Cemetery on Jamaica Avenue.  It was a bitter cold, somber day.   A day covered by a dome of silence and sorrow.  Family members walking up the small incline to the top of the cemetery.

I remember things I was told that I don’t remember witnessing firsthand.   I heard that when my Aunt Anne O’Donnell came home from work and first heard the unbearable news that her younger brother, Joe, was dead, she sat down on her mother’s lap in the rocking chair and let her mother rock her like a baby.  Anne was 30 years old but desperately needed her Mommy’s comfort that day.  Her brother, Joe, was the next youngest sibling and only a year and a half her junior.

One thing that probably bothers me most of all is not being able to know what happened that day in October.  Maybe I shouldn’t want to know.  But for some reason, I want to know, or at least feel, that someone was there with my Uncle Joe.   I want to know that other human beings were right there with him, holding him, offering him some level of support, some level of comfort, some level of love.   
Many, many years later I came across the letter that my Grandmother wrote to "the powers that be" basically pleading that  her son be spared from this "police action" in Korea.  She said her son had served his country throughout World War II and that he had been the sole surviving officer of his unit at the Battle of the Bulge.  Now, he was the father of two little girls who were only 6 years old and 2 years old.  Hadn't he done enough?   Grandma O'Donnell's pleading fell on deaf ears.  A horrifying realization came over me when I noticed this refusal letter was actually dated a few days after Joe had died.  Talk about irony. It actually made me feel sick to my stomach.

I was privileged to have experienced this man first hand, however briefly, and I know what a kind, gentle, loving man he was.   I cannot bear to envision him dying alone on a battle field.
I hate war.  It kills loving, kind young men.