Free Writing...Or At Least a Wierd Attempt

"It was a bright cold day in April and all the clocks were striking thirteen." My neighbor Joe always muttered crazy things like that. Who knew what was going on in his head? The man had been through so much in his life. He was born back when drinking would have put you in jail, and now drinking is the one common think Joe and I share. Life is hard when you go through a war, and as crazy as it may seem, Joe is the one person that can understand what it’s like. Granted, he saw a much different war than I did, but the effects were the same.
"It was a bright cold day in April and all the clocks were striking thirteen,” he muttered again, speaking about his time stationed in Germany. Joe served in the second World War and was in Berlin after the Nazi surrender. “The Nazi surrender seemed as impossible as a 13th hour. That’s why we used that phrase,” Joe continued. “I stood beneath the grand clock in the square and I was scared. Surrounded by my rejoicing brothers, I could only feel fear for what I was going to return to when I returned home.” Joe knew that when he made it back to his North Dakota farm that the house would be empty. His wife had run off during the war, Joe finding out with the ever so familiar “Dear John” letter. He didn’t know how he was going to get through it. To him he was leaving one war to enter another. There would be a divorce to go through, papers to sign, property to split. It was almost as if he never wanted to leave that square in Berlin.
Joe did leave that square though and after a lengthy divorce he was living in a one bedroom studio apartment in a small developing downtown area named after St. Paul. He would live there for the next sixty years.
I started renting the apartment next to Joe three years ago, and although the man is pushing ninety, he is the one person in my life I can relate to. Joe knew war, as did I. Granted, he spoke about it, had stories, and could illustrate his time of American Patriotism. For me however, it was too horrific, to hard to bare. The years I spent over there where years I’m not ready to relive, if I even can ever. Listening to Joe gives me hope though, if a man like that can have a life full of joy, full of sadness, and full of well life, then what’s stopping me. My hope is when I’m ninety I will be able to return the favor that Joe does for me. His time, his friendship gets me through on days when all I can think about is that time in my life, I time I wish to forget. Yet it appears that the chances of it being forgotten are as good as the clock striking thirteen.