World War II Was Just Yesterday

An old lady gave me a gift today.
   I was flying back from San Antonio and we were seated next to each other. We said hello when I sat down, and then I got to work revising one of my books. About an hour or so into the almost-three-hour flight she started making conversation, asking me how I could read the small type I use to conserve paper when I print things out to edit. We got to talking and I could tell she was originally from somewhere else, so I asked. Belgium, though she'd been in Texas for sixty-five years, far longer than she'd ever lived where she was born. She's 88 now.
   We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from the Cowboys (she's despairing) to maximum tax rates to how she doesn't remember words in Flemish to Hawaii (her destination) to how her departed husband was vertically integrated into the West Texas cotton business. I even found out that she lived in Sherman, TX for a while, which is where I went to school (go Roos!).
   As the plane was making its approach into Burbank, somehow the conversation turned to her brother. Her voice got very quiet as she said 'the Germans got him. For two years we didn't know where he was, then we found out he was in an Unknown grave in Holland.'
   She was right back there, aged fifteen when the Nazis invaded Belgium and they took her brother to work as slave labor since all the German boys were fighting. She told me how the Gestapo came to their house and told her brother he'd better be on the train Monday, or they would come back for the rest of the family. So he went. And he died.
   Her tears were fresh and real and I could see the fear and outrage and terror in this 88-year-old woman's eyes as if she were seeing the Nazi men in black in front of her at that very moment. It was a humbling experience, and suddenly I understood why she would have left Belgium 65 years ago and never looked back.
   We had discussed my writing - it's how the conversation started - and as she dabbed at her tears she told me 'you should write about that. It's something you never forget.'
   I gave her one of my old cards, back from when I worked at Countrywide, with my cell number and a brief reminder of where we'd met. I want to get her story, even though I know it will cause her pain. And I think she wants to tell it, even though it will cause her pain. These things need to be recorded and people need to remember how inhumane human beings can get.