It was only a few feet away from where I was, but I'll never be able to walk that distance to find him again.
It was only a few minutes after I talked to him, and I'll never get that time back.
If you've ever wondered about the inner workings of what someone in the military really wants in terms of being remembered and how they feel about what happens after they die, here it is.
There's a memorial service tomorrow, which I don't plan on attending. Who will be there, however, includes people that don't know him, people that are going to mispronounce his name, people that will give platitudes about the honor of service, people that are obligated to be there, people he worked with, and a handful of people that he cared about.
Army Times was kind enough to write a very brief article about him. If you can't be bothered to click that link, it stated where he was from, the unit he was assigned to, this stupid blurb "Rasmussen joined C Company in January 2013, according to a Fort Hood news release issued Tuesday. He enlisted 10 years before that and made a previous war-zone deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007," and a list of his awards (well, some, it goes on to say 'and other decorations'). In summation: he's a guy that did some stuff, here's some stuff he did.
Also, there was this picture:
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| No one wants to be remembered looking like this. |
First, Deric didn't much care for the Army. His '10 years before...' was in reference to the fact that he'd been a Marine prior to joining, time spent initially enjoying the service, then loathing the last few years of it - which is why he got out. No matter how shitty it was in the Corps though, Deric was pretty adamant that being in the Army was "Just as, if not a whole lot more stupid" than being in the Marines. The only part of the Army he really cared about was the Medevac mission, and was essentially riding out his time until he could retire, "Ugh, I'm already past that halfway mark. Might as well stick around and get the pension out of it. Kind of too late to do anything else, know what I mean?" As for his awards, he saw them more of a hassle than anything else, and more of a decoration that he could frame when he was old, something he could point at and laugh about how dumb he'd been to have gotten some of them. "And this one is for attendance, and this one is for being a team player, and this is one is for that one time I didn't punch someone in the dick for being retarded. That one I earned, junior."
As far as pomp and circumstance, he loathed it. But, usually everyone does.
I like to look at my life like a story that pans out in ways both predictable and chaotic. Most people here are bit players, secondary characters that aren't really involved with moving the plot forward. Deric wasn't one of those people. Deric was someone I could joke about Captain Phillips' utter stupidity with, without having to explain the life of a sailor. He was someone I could call shipmate (ironically) and have him toss back an insult about my sexuality (or confusion thereof) without the preemption of the term. We shared much discussion of random crap and how our lives made odd intersections (Bohomme Richard Battle Group?! You too?) over many a lunch back at Hood. Of everyone I spent my time with here at Masar-E-Sharif, when I made it up here, his is the company I sought, made this place bearable in light of all the bad memories being here brings up.
This is a guy, that after watching curling with me, decided to help me invent a ridiculous Swedish sport using those little propellers on a stick - that you roll around in your hand to make them fly - with ultra Nordic terms (I do not know how to make umlauts and accents, but rest assured, there were many, and lots of Fj's, Y's, Z's, Jn's and W's used), then played with me - platonically - for the next several hours because neither one of us could sleep and he was out of cigarettes.
Deric was so much more than a blurb in the paper and a memorial service. I can't make everyone understand the kind of friend he was, or how close, but I can remember him in my own way. I can immortalize him in writing, because stories last, and I'm going to make sure his sticks around. If you ever see something about a redhead or a guy with a impish grin and a throaty laugh that went 'heh heh,' (seriously, two syllables, his laugh always made me laugh), it'll be Deric I'm writing about.
Sassy Rassy is survived by his friends, three children, and wife Jenna(vieve), whom "Is super hot, which is awesome, and she has a thing for gingers. Thank GOD for that. If anything ever happened to me, at least I know she wouldn't have a problem finding another guy. Me? I'm kind of a chudd."
A note about the picture: That's what's known as a Hero Photo. We all get one, several times a year, specifically for the media in the off chance that we don't make it back. Deric and I referred to it lovingly as a Death Pic, "like a Dick Pic, but from the waist up." We've talked about how much we hated those things. How disingenuous they are, how many we've had to take between us. He told me that how, after years of doing them, they've gotten progressively worse, on purpose. Eventually, he said, he'd get to the point where they'd have to wonder if they could even use them because of how ridiculous he was going to make his expressions.
So, you know what? This is actually a perfect picture to remember him by.
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| "Heh heh" |
