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When I woke up the morning of January 11th, 1988, I was ten years old. It was a Monday and my brothers and I were supposed to be getting ready for school. Mildly excited at the prospect of a snow day, or an extremely rare case of my mother over-sleeping, I trotted into the living room with, what I can only imagine, was a bad case of bed head and an expressive look of curiosity on my face. That all faded when I saw my mother sitting on the old living room couch with tears in her eyes and a box of tissues in her lap.

My father had died the night before, during brain surgery. He was 39 years old.

The following Friday during his funeral, I began to put together the pieces of a life that I have since been stretching to understand for more than twenty years.

Dad was a Marine. He had served his country proudly from the age of 17 until shortly after his 21st birthday. He was stationed in Memphis, California, Whidbey Island and Da Nang, Vietnam. He received Purple Hearts and commendations from high ranking Navy officials for bravery in battle and pulling two swimmers from the turbulent ocean during rare recreation time. He was listed as a Jet Engine Mechanic but according to military records, also spent a lot of time with reconnaissance squads. I can only imagine what he witnessed or even participated in during that ugly war.

His medical records state that he died of stomach cancer during surgery to remove a large brain tumor that was believed to be the most imminent threat to his health at the time. An autopsy revealed that his body was riddled with cancers. He was lucky to live as long as he had. Doctors I have talked to and research I have done independently have led my family and me to believe that he was exposed to high levels of Agent Orange during his tours in Vietnam. At some point after his return home from war, he developed Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma an extremely aggressive form of cancer that, in 1988, killed 90% of its victims in less than a year. The disease, only one possible side effect of Agent Orange exposure, attacks the lymphatic system, spreads very quickly and is usually not detected until it's too late.

The military would neither confirm nor deny that my father was exposed to Agent Orange during his military career. Since American families who are victims of the Agent Orange legacy are entitled to monetary compensation, the military's stubbornness in my father's case blocked my brothers and me from ever receiving a dime from the government for poisoning my father in the jungles of Vietnam.

The question remains: Why should a toxic waste dump thousands of miles away from my warm American home be of any concern to me? Well, my father's life was cut short there. Countless other lives were lost there. Still, to this day, innocent Vietnamese children generations removed from those that started that war are suffering silently at the hands of governments that did what they thought they had to do in time of war. The mess has yet to be cleaned up.

I am not a soldier. I cannot begin to understand the thought processes men and women go through during war. The best experiences I have to compare to war are childhood fist fights and arguments between my brothers and me. We fought with heart over hurt feelings, perceived personal attacks, embarrassment and toys. We fought through my mother's pleads to stop, blood and tears, threats of spankings and even broken bones. But at the end of every argument, the outcome was always the same: my brothers and I were friends again and my mother always made us share in cleaning up the mess we had made. Together.

Learn more about this author, Jessica Kaaz.
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