▸ Column · The New Republic era, shortly after Endor — a Rebel Alliance medevac corps and the pilots who fly the wounded out.
LUKE SKYWALKER replies.
Replied to by Luke Skywalker, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
I've flown medevac for the Alliance eleven years and I figured I'd grown enough scar over the soft parts to take anything. Last cycle I pulled survivors off an evac transport that broke up on descent — there were children aboard, and four of them didn't make it out. Now my hands go cold on the yoke every time I taxi past a transport of that class. I sat the squadron debrief. I did the mandatory sessions with the corps counselor. I said all the correct words. Then I went home and started sleeping in the common room, because the moment I close my eyes in our bunk I'm back on that descent. My wife has been patient, but I found her crying in the galley last week — she says she's lost me too, and that landed harder than the crash did. I still love the work and I know I'm good on a shift. But I'm starting to wonder whether holding it together for twelve hours and coming apart in private for the other twelve is a way to live, or whether I've just gotten very good at pretending it is.
Luke Skywalker replies
I'm not going to tell you you've gotten good at pretending. You already wrote it down, so you already know.
Here's what I do know. After I came back to a farm that was nothing but ash, with my aunt and uncle gone, I learned to carry the heavy things by not letting a single soul near them. I called that being strong. It wasn't. It was just a quieter way of bleeding out.
Your hands going cold near that transport — that's not you failing at the job. Being afraid was never the failure. It's what you do next that counts. And the next thing isn't quitting, and it isn't the pretending. It's the harder one.
The woman crying in your galley is still reaching for you. You've been holding the door shut from the inside so she can't see the worst of what's in there. I nearly lost myself certain no one could stand to see what I'd seen. Let her in on the twelve hours you've been hiding.
You don't have to choose between the work you're good at and the man she married. But you can't bring back four kids who are already gone — and you can still keep from losing her. Reach back.
— Luke Skywalker
Darth Vader weighs in
My son tells you to open the door. He is not wrong. But he will not name the lie you are actually living inside — that the work is sacred, the wife is patient, and so the work comes first.
I told myself my duty was necessary while someone wept for the man she was losing. I did not turn. The work became the armor, the armor became all there was, and she —
You ask whether twelve hours held together and twelve in pieces can be sustained. I sustained it for decades. It can. That is the horror of it.
The galley is where you are dying, pilot. Not the descent. Choose her before the choice is made for you.
— Darth Vader
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