In a VA hospital hallway, one last ritual works its power
With permission from the Washington Post by By Lauren Koshere
Lauren Koshere is a writer who works in food service at William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wis., and volunteers for Veterans Affairs’ “My Life, My Story” program.
MADISON, Wis. — Final Salutes don’t come with much notice, maybe five minutes. But even those of us in chronically understaffed departments can attend. I join a river of co-workers flowing toward Ward 1B: nurses in turquoise scrubs, doctors in white coats, executives in business suits, police in uniform and me in a hairnet and black polyester polo — “VA Food Service” embroidered over the heart — but without my usual stainless-steel tray cart.
Most of us working in Veterans Affairs hospitals are not veterans. But the nurse standing across from me, in a hall lined with people, must be a veteran: She knows exactly how to stand with respect for a memorial service. I try to copy her posture, feet shoulders-width apart, hands joined behind my back.
No one speaks. Then the quiet is broken by a single resonant tone. Five seconds of silence. Then another tone. A nurse carrying a brass singing bowl and wooden mallet appears from the hospice unit. She strikes the bowl again. Behind her, another nurse escorts a morgue cart draped in an American flag.
I think of a hospice patient I’ve been bringing meals to for weeks. He was born in the late 1940s. Every day, his thin form lies at the same angle under a faded Green Bay Packers blanket.
The gurney comes into full view, and I now see a black baseball cap with a yellow, red and green Vietnam veterans badge resting on the flag.
When the procession stops, people remove their hats. Veterans salute, and hold it, while the rest of us raise our hands to our hearts. The first notes of a “Taps” recording fill the hallway, and we are locked in stillness.
I think of a cold sunny March morning in Wausau, Wis., when we buried my Grandpa Clem, a World War II Navy veteran. My vision blurs as the song continues, and I wonder how many other funerals are being remembered in this hallway. I hear soft, deep sighs and a few sniffles.
As the flag-draped gurney passes on its way to the morgue, I realize it isn’t every day that I’m this close to the sharply defined red, white and blue. Working with veterans reminds me of what millions have invested for the idea of that flag. But it also reminds me of what that flag has asked, has taken. There’s a profound promise in those colors, yet the Vietnam veterans hat speaks of all there is to question.
In a series of conversations with Bill Moyers for the 1988 PBS series “The Power of Myth,” the writer Joseph Campbell said, “Affirmation is difficult. We always affirm with conditions.” But “affirming it the way it is — that’s the hard thing, and that is what rituals are about.”
During a Final Salute, the deceased veteran’s identity is not disclosed.
I learn later that VA ceremonies for veterans who have died vary from place to place. And they don’t happen at every hospital. There’s a saying: “If you’ve been to one VA, you’ve been to one VA.” This is just the ritual at our facility, one of about 140 VA hospitals, among more than 1,300 VA care sites.
The Final Salute on this day has gathered strangers in honor of a stranger. I don’t know whose loved one walks behind the gurney. I don’t know who lies under the Vietnam veterans hat, the American flag. But I did know a veteran who liked the Packers and chocolate ice cream.
I never saw him again.