I've been listening, for the first time in almost 20 years, to the taped interviews my brother Lee did with my father in 1988-1989 in which Dad recalled his service during World War II.

I'm loving it in some ways, and at other times I'm crying as I listen, to hear Dad's grief for fallen comrades and what I believe to be his own suppressed trauma.

Nothing more pithy than that to say right now, except that I'll be commenting more as I get farther along. Dad's War experiences are mentioned in Shameless, hence their relevance here.

There are comments by Dad that reflect things he felt shame about, like getting into trouble with the authorities, but mostly I'm struck with his idealization of his War experiences. Only rarely does he mention, for example, that when he got wounded, he stayed in the hospital for as long as he could before going back to the fighting. Or that after seeing the brains of a Japanese soldier spattered on his uniform he felt like throwing up. He mentions these in passing as if they don't mean much, when to me they mean everything.

I'm wishing I could question him more about the experiences that hurt him so I could learn more about their impact; these tapes were made in the two years before his death, and I'm not sure I listened to them for the first time before he died.