Lost years

I was talking to a Vietnam veteran about what he felt he had lost serving in Vietnam. Ten years. That one year he felt took ten years out of his life. That was how long he took to catch up to where his life was before he left home. Instead of his children going to school, he felt he should be seeing his grandchildren gong to school. It was more than the lost of the man, it was the lost of future possibilities. Ten years out of a life narrows the number of choices. Those years can not be replaced, they are lost forever. The other sad fact, he felt that very little in those ten years had meaning that last beyond them. He felt he was living in a fog during those times, swirling events pulling and pushing memories in and out of his head. That was the effect of surviving combat, defining who you were in your mind for years afterwards. Filling you with lingering doubts of what was real. Retaining the memories of what you had to endure to survive, delaying what you were living for.