A Path Less Traveled
by Craig W. Steele
My brother, Mark Edgeman, took a path less traveled to Arlington National Cemetery. Mark, who died October 26, 2002 — suddenly, painlessly, quietly — from a heart attack, was a recipient of the Silver Star and the Purple Heart medals. No one in the family can tell you much about his time in Vietnam, though, because he wouldn’t talk about it.
He had the soul of a poet. But after Vietnam, he worked in all sorts of jobs that were very unpoetic: convenience store clerk, restaurant cook, security guard, vacuum cleaner salesman, McDonald’s associate — to name a few. He never held any job for very long; his taxes were always a nightmare to do because he might have a dozen W-2 forms every year. He never had any problem getting a job — he was very successful in interviews — he just couldn’t keep one for more than six months, except when he worked as a security guard; he kept that job for five years. Maybe he found security there.
He mingled easily with people from all strata of society. His were natural gifts of charm, charisma, and conversation. He should have been a great vacuum cleaner salesman, but he wasn’t. Just as in his other jobs, he spent too much time telling the boss how to run the company. Maybe the reason he lasted so long as a security guard was that the boss rarely came by on the night shift.
Mark could be engaging. He had a sparkling, dry sense of humor and never laughed at his own jokes, unless you did. That’s a rare gift.
He was also dark and moody. Sometimes, he was very animated; sometimes, he acted lifeless; sometimes, when he felt uncomfortable in a social situation, he would sneak out the back door. And sometimes, when life grew dark, he would be lost in his navel for days.
Whatever happened in Vietnam changed him, said the family.
His melancholy increased when his wife, Karen, died in 1990 from ovarian cancer. His two stepchildren moved away soon after their mother’s death. After that, even when he was having a good time, he remained cloaked in sadness. What little poetry he wrote any more was dark and cynical. The subject matter was inequality, hard work, and lost love. He never wrote about the unfairness of life, however.
He was extremely overweight his last ten years. His excess weight and unrestrained eating produced all sorts of health problems: diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea (for which he had to wear a tube in his throat), varicose veins and swelling in his legs, and bone spurs along his spine.
He wore black jeans and black T-shirts most of the time, and would only wear regulation Army-green wool socks; no others.
He chain-smoked cigarettes: Marlboros, Camels, and, when he couldn’t afford the stores’ prices anymore, his own home-rolled ones. None of them helped his asthma, which he’d had since childhood.
His apartment was Spartan in its furnishings (except for the television and VRC) and barren in its decorations (except for the Star Trek posters and model spaceships in his bedroom). Every thing he owned was old and well worn (like his three-legged orange couch, his stacks of comic books and paperback Star Trek novels, and his 1973 dark-green Plymouth Fury II), or broken and useless (like his models of the Enterprise and Klingon and Romulan starships).
During the last few years of his life, he slipped from melancholy into depression. He couldn’t work. He went on disability. He borrowed money from the family — to the point that only I would loan him anything, and then not more than 20 dollars at a time.
On that October 26, while working crowd control as an Auxiliary Police Volunteer at the annual Halloween Parade in Meadowville, Pennsylvania, he fainted suddenly, and stopped breathing. Paramedics worked for nearly half-an-hour on his body, but couldn’t revive him. My guess is his soul found a better place to live and didn’t want the body revived.
Years earlier, he’d told me he wanted to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
“No way,” I’d said. “That place is for generals and John Wayne-types — real heroes.”
But, I honored his wishes and made the request. Amazingly, he was accepted, on the strength of his Silver Star medal, the citation of which read, in part, “...stood his ground in the face of great adversity.”
Courage lives where it’s found.
Craig W. Steele is a writer and university biologist who lives in northwestern Pennsylvania. His stories have appeared in Calliope, The Hiss Quarterly, Stories for Children Magazine, The Storyteller and StoriesThatLift.com, with one forthcoming in Concisely. Contact Craig.
