Before The War Poem by Jim Yerman

There are countless reasons to end a war…before that war's begun…
If you'll permit me this moment…I'd like to add another one:

Everyone has a story we add a page to every day…
Some of the chapters in my dad's story were too difficult for him to talk about
so he filed them all away.

Chapters, I imagine, so painful his heart must have decreed
the words written on their pages were for only him to read.

He never spoke of his time in war…he was a soldier in World War II.
He never spoke of the Holocaust…or growing up a Jew.

Dad talked freely about other pages in his story…
but these chapters he kept us from.
Vital chapter in understanding the man he would become.

Mom said Dad didn't like to talk about those horrible terrible years…
What it was like to kill an person (the enemy) he didn't know…
how he lost the hearing in one ear.

I don't think Dad ever realized the price we all would pay…
How much his missing chapters would cost….
How, when he closed certain chapters of his life…other chapters were lost.

When we asked Mom why Dad was always silent, grumpy
and why he wasn't very much fun…
Mom would nod her head, sigh then tell us how war changes everyone.

She'd say, "I wish you would have known your dad before the war and killing came…
because, " she said, "ever since the war…he's never been the same."

And herein lies that other reason I wish wars would stop forevermore:
All the children who never had the chance to know who their parents were
before the war.