Mrs. Felix

86 years old and still kicking. Mrs. Felix owns an apartment building, where she lives only a couple blocks away from me. In her cozy little apartment, the first thing one notices are the enormous amount of bookshelves that almost encompass the room. Bookshelves embedded into the walls are covered with books; every surface area of the apartment is scattered with them. All these books, both fiction and nonfiction, are about World War II. Mrs. Felix served in WWII and still regales her family and friends with tales of the war.

As told to me by her grandson, Alex:

Mrs. Felix is 86 years old and still remembers everything that happened in the War. According to her grandson, every little detail that comes up in conversation triggers a memory of the War that she recounts. Mrs. Felix was stationed in the United States, on the East side of the country, working as a nurse. She did not patch up the soldiers; that job was left to the field doctors and nurses overseas. Instead, her job leaned more toward physical therapy and mental recovery.
She hated her time served in the war. Every memory she tells is apt to bring tears springing to her eyes. They continually fall as she goes on.

She remembers mostly the expressions on the multitudes of faces she saw almost on an assembly line. “These kids were really broken,” she says sadly. “And it wasn’t just in their bodies, either. Their minds were muddled with pain and fear. They killed. It wasn’t natural for these kids to kill on instinct, without thinking anymore. Because if you cared about who you killed, then the war really gets to you, and you’re liable to go nuts.”
Mrs. Felix recalls a moment when she was helping a soldier onto a cot. His leg was fresh out of a cast, and he was being wheeled around on a wheelchair. This man had a family to go home to, a wife and children, and a suburban home. This man was also suicidal. He had not a care in the world, not for his family, friends, home, or work. He lost his other leg and was confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.

There are not only bad and horrible memories that Mrs. Felix remembers. Her grandson’s favorite story is how his grandparents met.
They met in a horrible time, and for that the memory is bittersweet. For all that she hates her time served, she cannot hold back the teary-eyed smile when she tells the story of how she and her husband met and fell in love.

She and her husband were both on the medical field, she a nurse, and he, a doctor. They often worked together fixing up patients and helping to mend them before they were shipped home. It was a slow courtship, filled with longing glances and short dates between shifts. He wooed her with flowers picked from the hospital garden, and stole kisses between file cabinets.