Troubled by FlashBacks to a Vietnam hospital stimulated by observing abuse of the elderly three winters ago, I scribbled down notes describing the relationships between present health care practices and the past. Stimulus N FlashBacks was born in the heat of the moment and as the memories poured out of my brain flooding my eyeballs, they shot out the ends of my fingers onto the keyboard. “Thirty years searching for balance,” the subtitle conveys the central theme of this literary quest. Core human issues explored against the backdrop of Nam: death & dignity, abuse and atrocities, drug abuse, emotional pain, meaning of life, pursuit of happiness, meeting fellow travelers at the tree and tasting the twelve different flavors. Families around the globe feel a great sense of loss when members of their cherished group are maimed, killed or psychologically damaged by conflicts at home or abroad. Friend or foe, humans of every race, color, gender, age or lifestyle persuasion are precious cogs in the gears that make the machinery of existence turn daily life into something meaningful and joyful.Laughter and beauty are the universal languages transcending the tangled semantics of cross-cultural interchange, inspiring and lifting us above the quagmire of envy and hate. Wartime squeezes the joy out of Mother’s Day, birth of babies, Christmas and the first wisp of spring when separation and the threat of everlasting loss paralyses us with a sense of impending doom. There are no spectators in the race of life encircling the globe. Each of us plays a part big or small by choice or passive complacency in deciding what the concept of freedom blended with responsibility to God and country really means down deep in our hearts. A quiet moment is given in reflection to the memory of loved ones lost to aging, accidents, homicide, suicide and conflicts home and abroad.