Osha Gray Davidson, on his blog True/Slant got hold of a very moving story from a Vietnam veteran named only Jim. Jim has been haunted by his time in-country for some 40 years. He has also done something about what haunts him. He has been back to Vietnam 18 times, making amends, making connections, and finding love.

They are at a school in Hanoi. It is a hot day and humid and the children are singing to Jim and a delegation of other returning American veterans. Little girls in clean white shirts present carnations to the men. The flowers are red — the color of good luck throughout Asia.

One small girl stands off to the side, shy and alone. Something about her catches Jim’s eye. He smiles at the thin 13-year-old with the round, pretty face. Linh beams a big smile right back at him.

Something happens in his heart. It’s all tangled up with pain and emptiness, but also with love and something else. The light of Linh’s smile probes the hole in Jim’s heart and he feels the darkness retreat a bit.

“There was just this… instant…connection between us,” he says groping for the right words, but with a smile you can hear over the phone. “I can’t explain it.”

Over the years, Jim has kept in contact with Linh and her family. He has made eighteen trips back to Vietnam, and always tries to spend as much time as possible with the family that has become entwined with his own. When Linh graduated from high school and her Vietnamese family didn’t have the money to send her to a university, it felt like the most natural thing in the world for Jim and his wife to pay. They also put Linh’s sister through college. You want the best for your children.

Every time he returns from Vietnam, Jim can tell the wound in his heart has healed more. “It’s closing, little by little,” he says.

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