As I write this, I still have tears in my eyes. I have been watching some of the videos we took last weekend of children and their families greeting their soldier parents and sons who have returned from Iraq. There was one greeting, one spontaneous moment of homecoming between a father and his daughter that made me suddenly burst out crying. The sheer joy and display of love we saw was and still is breathtaking.
I am not ashamed of my tears. I actually surprised myself with the suddenness of the experience. I felt poised during the event. But it was the moment that Ron captured that did it to me. I feel honored to have the opportunity to bring this story of love, sacrifice, survival, commitment, and devotion to you. Ron and Deb did a great job of capturing the range of reactions in these families. This documentary is going to be powerful.
Believe me, this documentary will move you deeply and hopefully inspire you to provide support for these children, their parents, and grandparents. Such support is needed before, during, and after deployment. Returning home does not mean that a community’s job is done. There is more that we need to do to support these soldiers and their families.
I knew that taking this on was going to be a challenge emotionally. Now what I knew between my ears has come home to my heart.
2 comments:
I must echo what Chuck said regarding our experience videotaping the return of Kansas Guard soldiers (men and women) returning from Iraq. It was truly emotional.
From our perspective as video documentary producers, there was one larger story with 175 smaller stories. In this context, smaller does not mean less important, it means the story is now at the individual family unit level. This is where the intense emotion is evident.
Imagine the returning soldier's feelings with regard to his, or her, children. "Will they remember me? Will they fear me? Will I still know how they look? It's been a long time and children grow quickly, especially with me gone! Have I really changed? Everybody says I'm going to come back a different person, so who am I?
I saw in some of the children a wide array of unanswered questions. "Will Mommy (or Daddy) still know me? Will I still know him? Can I still hug him? My friends say he won't be the same. Will he still love me? Will Mommy still cry at night?"
I shot video of one returning father who with one arm, held both his daughters close to his chest, and maintained a patriotic grip on his unit's guidon with the other. Making sure the guidon was proudly displayed in a vertical position. To the one daughter whose head who nestled under his chin, he said "I'm home for good now Honey! OK?" She tightened the grasp on her father and began to cry.
I remember the homecomings of the first Gulf War in 1991-92. Just as emotional. The difference between then and now is that it will probably be repeated again by the same father who calmly told his daughter "I'm home for good now, Honey!"
Yes, that was the moment that affected me so deeply, the father reassuring his sobbing young daughter.
Well said, Ron. I have observed the same issues. I asked one young soldier, "Can you share what you were feeling and thinking on the flight home?" His immediate response, "Fear." How would his two-year-old respond?
We have much of this on tape. And there is much, much more to get. Then as we proceed, the rewarding but challenging work of going over everything with a fine tooth comb (I wonder where that phrase came from) to begin assembling the program.
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