As a member of the Vietnam War generation, I have heard many stories about levels of the tragedy.

A colleague, an Episcopal priest, shared that her brother, a college student who majored in peace and reconciliation, was drafted into service. After basic training, he returned home, then without notifying his parents and sister, took his life by leaping off the Sagamore Bridge into the Cape Cod canal.

His struggle to end his life before taking up a rifle to end another’s, was not as unique as you might think. In fact, that “conflict” (Congress did not have the nerve to call it what it was: a war) is distinguished from all recorded wars in this grave respect: more have killed themselves before, during and after the fighting, than actually perished in combat. Over 60,000, compared to 55,000, field casualties, not to mention close to 1 million Vietnamese civilians.

So, I ask, how can I honor both types of death? Clearly one way is to go on living in ways that would honor them, which is a point made in traditional Jewish rituals of burial. To do so, I have chosen to join the nuclear ban movement, which is gaining worldwide momentum ever since the United Nations passed the Treaty For The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, in 2017.

Since then, over 80 nations have ratified it, making it illegal to build or possess missiles on their soil. Even though none of the nine possessor-nations, like the U.S., Russia, North Korea, or Israel, have agreed to do so, pressure is mounting, given the individual nations’ bloated budgets, siphoning off necessary funds to combat the ongoing viral world war, particularly raging in the regions of rural, poverty-stricken India and Brazil, to name the most populous, the most devastated.

And we all have a stake in rebuilding our nation’s roads, bridges, tunnels, and water-infrastructures, while providing relief to those hit hardest by the pandemic, including our ailing health care system.

What can I do to meaningfully remember three of my high school friends who never returned from Vietnam? I’m doing my best to advocate through my New England-wide church organizations (United Church of Christ); actively supporting federal legislation under the faithful leaderships of Rep. Jim McGovern (Norton’s Bill: HR 2850), and Sen. Ed Markey’s No First Use Act; on the state level, a similar bill by Rep. Lindsey Sabadosa: H.3688; and Sen. Jo Cumerford’s S.1555, establishing a citizen’s nuclear weapons’ commission.

Put simply, reliance on these catastrophically devastating warheads is resoundingly immoral: the consequences too grim to calculate; the costs too heavy to bear; the sacrifices too much to endure while COVID marches on; and the stories too painful to recall the brave, year after agonizing year.

The Rev. Peter Kakos, Northampton lives in Northampton.