Linda Troeller

My father served in WWII and was wounded in 1945.  He was in the hospital away from my mother for three years to save his foot and was awarded a purple heart. He was disabled for the rest of his life using a brace. The doctors told my mother he had a year to live. She took a secretary position, put me in pre-school and started what was called then, an ‘upside down household,’ with my father raising me at home. He moved us to the NJ shore where he said he could heal away from the noisy city in the path of the Manasquan River’s flow. When we went to the beach I un-bandaged the twenty-five foot wrap he wore on his shot-off ankle.  The toes would unfurl and he dipped the flesh around where there was no bone into a tidal pool. He made jokes to avoid showing pain at the moment of entry into the cold water.  There were always a few minutes when he was leaning on my shoulder, before I sensed his relief.  This kind of intimacy lasted a lifetime, because his way of being brave gave me entre into living with damage.  He died at 77, I cleared out the house and found what my mother had saved.