Sometimes in my reverie I really long for the '60s. I remember those days, those nights, those impossible dreams, and something down deep inside me yearns to go backward in time. I long to embroider my bell-bottoms and paint my face and wear flowers in my hair. A smile creeps into my heart as I recall my youth, my vibrance, my determination, my folly. Iron Butterfly throbs through my veins along with Ten Years After. "I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do. So I leave it up to you." Feed your head. Groovy.

But I remember other things, as well.

I remember newsreels, headlines, graphic depictions of a violence so horrible that it could not have theretofore been imagined. I remember my first serious love, an "older man" of 19 named Roland Ray, who taught me about padiddles and then went off to war to lay down his life in a Southeast Asian jungle. And it is in remembrance of those things that I have traveled 1,017 miles, as the crow flies, to meet my brother and cyberspace unit commander, Rollingthunder6.

We are standing at the Vietnam War Memorial in Columbia, South Carolina. Two beautiful granite walls flank a five-sided granite pylon which reaches toward the skies. The pylon is carved in frieze motifs portraying the contributions of all branches of the armed services. The walls are engraved with the names of all South Carolinians who were killed or missing in action during the Vietnam War. They are listed by County. Name and date of death.

I am just standing there, agape, moved by the moment. There is silence as we contemplate the meaning of those names and dates.

"There are some very interesting things about the names on this wall," Six finally says.

He points to a name and date.

"Look at this one, for instance. Date of death is 1975, two years after the war officially ended. Two years after the last troops left the Nam. Did he die later of wounds, or was he actually killed over there in 1975? It makes you wonder."

He points to another.

"And this one, killed in 1957. He must have been in one of the very first advisory groups that went to Vietnam. This was long before combat troops were deployed. What happened to this man?"

He asks enormous questions. I have no answers. Perhaps answers are not necessary at this point, but the curious mind ever questions, seeks, searches to know why. My own mind goes off in all directions, posing hypotheses, speculating wildly, imagining scenarios. We go down the length of the two walls, Six pointing out all the anachronous entries.

We stand at a map of Vietnam, carved from granite and inlaid in the bricks on which we walk. The map is divided into the four U.S. Military Corps areas, I, II, III and IV. Major cities are depicted. I ask him where he served during his two tours. He points out city after city, venue after venue, effectively covering all four of the divisions. With his foot he points out the Cambodian skies under which an old Khmer left him with, "La mort est une grande dame." ("Death is a lady.") He shows me where his RTO replaced him in the line off the Huey and took a .50 cal round that originally had Six's name on it. I am mute with awe and respect.

We work our way around to the back of the memorial walls. As I round the corner, I see these words carved in the low granite wall surrounding the memorial:

"We few, We happy few, We band of brothers."

Tears begin to fill my eyes. The enormity of sacrifice hits me hard then, as I think of that band of brothers and the price they paid. The tears threaten to flow. I try to blink away the evidence. I look at Six and he is looking at me but he says nothing.

We walk on.

We study the frieze motifs in the pylon, so exquisitely and masterfully etched. We stop to take pictures. We make our way finally to the end of the second wall, completing our circle.

It is then that I see it.

*MIA

*MIA. Carved into the granite in bold letters.

Something about that asterisk just does me in. The tears are flowing now, free, free, free at last. I head for the nearest bench and sit down. Sobbing now. Six is there to comfort me. He puts his arm around me and hugs me. Then he just looks into my eyes, he doesn't say anything, and hugs me again.

"Do you have someone missing in action in Vietnam?", he asks.

I look at him; our eyes meet. There's a very old soul in there, reaching out to me, feeling my pain. An old and wise soul. I look at the way his forehead kinda crinkles right there in the middle when he is seriously contemplating, and I stammer n-no, had a boyfriend killed there but no one MIA. The question remains so plain in his eyes. The question is a blinking neon sign.

I want to tell him but I can't. The words won't come. They are in my head, of course, struggling to take flight. But I know if I try to free them the tears will flow so uncontrollably that I won't be able to speak. Sitting there, thinking about this unique individual, I realize once again the slender thread by which we are all bound. I think of my boss back home, also a Vietnam vet; of my good friend Terry, of Ed, of all the other veterans who put their lives on the line for us. What remote chance is it that makes those determinations? Why but for the toss of some cosmic die are their names not engraved on a wall alongside those of their brothers?

To think that they might not even exist, that we might never have known them, been a part of their lives, enjoyed their humor, their wisdom and insight; that all those special relationships might never have happened, or that the world might be less for their absence ...

"It was the asterisk," I say. "Something about that asterisk just got to me."