By Larry Shurilla
The time had come for me to make my acceptance speech. Jerry Strong proclaimed, “And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, permit me to introduce the newest United States Senator from the great state of Wisconsin, Senator Justin Thao!”
As I made my way to the pulpit, it was surprising to notice how the cheering and applause of over a thousand people could seem so quiet and muffled. My attention was racing between my prepared acceptance speech and the avalanche of new thoughts that were overtaking me faster than a Ferrari in the fast lane. I grabbed the wooden edge of the top of the podium, looked out over the smiling faces of so many supporters and began, “Thank you, Jerry, ah, Mr. Strong, and thank you my dear friends and family for the honor of standing before you this evening. It’s going to take a little time getting used to being called, Senator.”
The word, “Senator,” had barely escaped my mouth when the room once again erupted into spontaneous applause and chanting, people jumping and waving “Thao Now!” campaign signs. It was then that I noticed, to my left and near the front row of the audience, a man seated in a wheelchair. He sat tall and proud, clapping his hands solidly and wearing a cloth hat with multi-colored pins. His hat was dark blue with golden embroidery that read “Vietnam Vet.” Suddenly, the words my grandfather had spoken to me years before came quickly into my mind.
One day after school, I had come home excited to tell my parents that my class had visited the traveling wall of the Vietnam Memorial and that I had made a rubbing of one of the names. When I showed the rubbing to my grandpa, he said, “It is good to remember those who have given their lives in battle for others, Justin, but please remember this also. I fought alongside many Laotians during the Vietnam War. We have no wall to honor our dead, but the names and faces of those who fought with me in Laos are forever etched in my memory; that is why you must always remember the things I have told you and share them with your children. We must never forget our Hmong brothers and sisters who have died for the cause of liberty.”
This confused me at first because wasn’t I an American? What did I have to do with Laotian Hmong who died in the Vietnam War? Only years later did I come to understand what my grandpa really meant.
As I continued looking at the veteran in the audience, I noticed a broad smile on his face and that no feet touched the ground beneath his wheelchair.
*****
“Is that when you lost your hearing, Grandpa? When you were shot in the hand?” I asked.
“No, Justin, the accident that took my hearing came about a year later on a different patrol. I became friends with an American soldier named James Schmidt. We all called him Jimmy. He had been assigned to our platoon as an advisor and he would call in for air strikes against the North Vietnamese whenever we discovered a concentration of the enemy or were under attack. Jimmy was the friendliest American I had ever met. He asked me to teach him the Hmong language and he also helped me learn English. It was through Jimmy that I first learned about Christianity. He once told me, ‘God has a purpose for you, Xeng. Everyone has a purpose in life. Even this war has a purpose, but darned if I know what it is right now.’
“One day during the monsoon season, we had been given orders to secure part of a supply trail through the jungle. The Americans were always moving food, vehicles, and weapons throughout Laos and Vietnam and many times asked us to help make sure the roads were protected or safe for travel. It had been raining every day for weeks and we were all soaked and feeling miserable. Jimmy had just gotten off the field phone with his superiors, and was leading about seven of us along the muddy supply road. We hadn’t seen any sign of the Viet Cong and thought the area was clear, when Jimmy stepped on a buried landmine.
“In an instant there was a great explosion with mud and bodies flying in every direction! All I really remember was calling out Jimmy’s name, seeing his face turn toward me and then, a great light and a sensation of floating. I didn’t wake up for four days. The last word I ever heard in my life was when I called out Jimmy’s name.”
*****
“When I first woke up after the road mine explosion, I quickly reached for my legs and grabbed them. I was so thankful there was something there. I had seen the land mines take many people’s feet and legs over the years. My first thought was that I was lucky, that God had spared me. It took me a few minutes to realize I couldn’t hear anymore because I was so thankful I still had my legs and arms. Because we were so deeply imbedded in the jungle, there was no hospital close enough to offer help and without a real doctor in our platoon, the men just did the best they could for me.
“After a short while, I noticed people speaking to me, but I could only see their lips moving, no sound, no sounds at all! I started to panic. I reached for my ears and felt gauze wrapped around my head. I tore it off, stood up and ran from person to person, grabbing them with both hands, staring into their faces and shouting at them. At least I thought I was shouting at them. I was moving my mouth and thinking the words, ‘Can you hear me? Am I speaking? What has happened to me!!!’ Then I started feeling dizzy and fell to the ground, unconscious.
“When I awoke the second time, I lay still and closed my eyes again. I tried to reason within myself that I really could hear, just not as well as before. It didn’t take long to realize, I was wrong. It is not so strange a feeling to have absolute quiet when your eyes are closed and it is nighttime, Justin, but it is very unsettling to have absolute quiet when your eyes are open in the bright daylight. It’s almost as if you are a spectator to the world and not a part of it. It is very easy to draw within yourself, never speak, and let life pass you by. I no longer felt that God had spared me. I felt punished and betrayed. I thought I should have been protected because I was simply guarding my country, not trying to invade someone else’s land. I felt angry like that for a long time.
“After a while, when you never speak to people, they stop speaking to you and start avoiding you. They feel you don’t want to be bothered, and they’re right! I didn’t want to speak to anybody because I wasn’t sure how I was sounding anymore and reading lips was difficult for me, took so much energy and it was so easy to misunderstand someone. While I was recovering, I became a loner and realized that the Laotian army was done with me. I didn’t blame them. There was no use for a deaf soldier in the jungle. I wanted to go home, but then I became frightened and thought, ‘What will Blia think of me? What will Paxia, my daughter, think of her deaf father?’
“It was during this time of hopelessness and depression that I was sitting under a tree near our camp, my back up against the trunk. My head was down and I was asking God, ‘Why? Why have you done this to me? What am I going to do now?’ All of a sudden I felt something go up along my back. At first I ignored it, but when I felt it again, I jumped up, thinking a centipede had crawled up my back under my shirt. I reached back and began slapping and hopping around. It only took a moment to realize there was no insect on me. I was puzzled and stared at the tree I was resting against. For some reason, I looked up, into the branches of the tree and saw about five or six noog liab, red birds. The thought crossed my mind that they were speaking to me, singing for me and that I should go back to the tree and hold its trunk. It is strange to tell you this, Justin, but it was not my thought to return to the tree. Someone else had put that thought into my mind. When I touched the tree with my hands, I felt that same tingle that was going up my back, only this time I felt it with my fingers.
“Going for a couple weeks without hearing had increased my sensitivity to touch and sight. As I stared at the birds and watched their beaks move, I felt their song in my hands. I can’t tell you the joy that came to me, Justin, when I felt music for the first time. I felt God was talking to me through the noog liab, telling me that things would be all right. I wasn’t forgotten or being punished. I was just experiencing one of life’s tests and God wanted me to know that he was there to help and comfort me. Sometimes it seems, Justin, when our heads and hopes are brought low because of the weight of the world, all we need do is look up, and see the hope that God has placed within our grasp.
“From the moment when I first held the tree and felt God’s pleasure, I’ve never been the same. I’ve been at peace. I began looking much more intently at the world around me and seeing things I had never seen before, beautiful things, subtle, intricate things that I used to take for granted. The ordinary was starting to become extraordinary to me. In a strange way, I began to think of hearing as a distraction to discovering the beauty of the world around me with my eyes. My accident was my beginning for a new life of awareness. Now, I couldn’t wait to get back to Blia and Paxia, but even then, I never knew the dangers that would lie ahead! “