American Hero

After being woken too early this morning, I staggered into my office and sat down to peruse Facebook.  My sister-in-law had put the memorial/picture that you see here, on her page.  I had heard about this man's death, had seen Yahoo News stories about it but didn't really pay attention.  I clicked on one, scanned through quickly and thought - well that's sad.

I love and respect this sister-in-law a great deal so decided I should look into it further.  If it meant enough to her to post that photo on her Facebook, it meant enough to me to find out more.  I Google'd this man's name and read quite a few articles concerning his life and recent death.  I put his name into Youtube search and watched interviews with him - Time Magazine, Conan, and others. 

I had become fascinated.  This man, who I had quickly read and forgotten about just days earlier, was an American hero.  The kind of hero who had put his life on the line countless times.  Who did everything he could to save not only his fellow soldiers but the innocent citizens and victims in a foreign country.

Watching the interviews, I found him to be modest, unassuming and polite.  He came across as almost shy and nervous but when a tough question was asked, he transformed into something more fierce, rigid and resolute.  He was unapologetic about taking so many lives.  Over 150 confirmed kills - more than any other sniper in U.S. history.  He stated that he has no regrets in killing those people.  You could see in his eyes that he meant it.

I was riveted as I watched him during those interviews.  I studied him.  It's a hobby of mine - being quiet, staying in the shadows so to speak while watching people, studying and learning them.  People are fascinating creatures.  Their ticks and quirks, body language, eyes, facial expressions.  You can learn so much by noticing those things as well as listening to what they're saying. 

So, I watched Chris Kyle closely and what I came away with were all of those things I've already mentioned but also, a deep sadness and pain within his eyes.  He had seen terrible things that you and I cannot begin to imagine.  Those things had become incorporated into who he was as a soldier and a man, a husband and a father. 

He talks about switching between soldier and husband/father.  When he was at war, he was one and when he came home, the others.  I think that people who have gone through things - horrible, tragic things - learn how to do that switching. 

I reference it in my own life as 'flipping the switch'.  For me, it's about choosing in any moment to turn off emotion and having the ability to do that.  I saw that same ability for shifting through personality traits - shy/nervous to hard and unrelenting - while Chris did interviews.  Not everyone can turn off or switch through them as fluidly.  That takes practice and training of oneself over the course of years.

Once home and retired from military service, Chris Kyle became involved in helping soldiers who suffer from PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder.  A year ago, I was diagnosed with PTSD and it came as a shock.  In my mind, only soldiers got that.  Only they had been through something awful enough to have it. 

Over the following months, I would sometimes think about it and try to embrace that diagnosis.  I would call up the memories from my past and think about the disease, fibromyalgia, that I now live with every day. 

My Rheumatologist believes that something so bad can happen in a person's life - physical, mental or emotional - that it somehow 'breaks' a person's brain or central nervous system.  It can cause an actual medical disease like fibromyalgia.  There are other theories about the root cause of it - hereditary, immuno-deficiences, etc. - but that is one hypothesis.

Maybe that Psychologist was right.  Maybe I do have PTSD.  When she gave me the diagnosis, she said, "You remind me of soldiers I've worked with.  You have that same need for rigid control of yourself.  To face things head on without emotion.  Or without ever showing emotion."

The eyes, however, are harder to control than anything else.  The cliche but very true saying is, "the eyes are the windows to the soul."  Somehow, our life experiences, bad and good, are within our gaze for always. 

Those haunted memories of being unable to save more lives, seeing the deaths of his brothers and sisters at arms were in Chris's eyes.  Child abuse, being abandoned by my mother, losing the ability to have more children, my son's illness that by God's mercy did not end in death, and having a terrible disease these last four years are in my eyes.

Sadness, fear, loss, anger and yes, enormous strength can clearly be seen by those that watch people who have been through their own hell.  

Chris Kyle retired from the Navy Seals.  He wrote a best selling novel - American Sniper - with his share of the proceeds going to help families of fallen soldiers.  He created a company to train law enforcement and military personnel.  He was involved in charitable organizations that helped service members transition back into life at home.  One of those organizations help people with PTSD. 

Last week, he and a close friend, another former member of the military took a young soldier, a man with PTSD, to a shooting range as a form of therapy.  Shortly after arriving, that young man fatally shot both Chris and his friend, Chad Littlefield. 

Chris Kyle was many things - a devout christian, a husband, father, brother, son, friend, author and he was a soldier, a sniper in foreign lands with a job to do.  He had a license to kill for his country; to protect its people and freedoms but Chris died at home, trying to be a healer.