In the leadup to Christmas, Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), wrote an emotional post on Instagram, recalling her father’s life, just four months after his death.
“For some reason I cried yesterday at the realization that I’m never going to see you rush downstairs again like you always used to do in the Capitol,” she wrote.
“I’m still waiting for you to call me on my phone, I’m still waiting to get on a flight to meet you for Christmas, I’m still waiting to be woken up from this bizarre nightmare/coma that was the last year watching what happens to a person who fights glioblastoma. I’m still waiting for a lot of things and guess I probably will be for the rest of my life… 113 days,” she wrote.
She wrote on Twitter about her father’s moving Christmas story on Dec. 24.
“Merry Xmas Eve – my father’s POW Christmas story is always one he would tell that would make me feel a sense of hope, faith in something greater, and awe for all our brave men and servicewomen,” she wrote. “I share it with you because he isn’t here to share it with me.”
Merry Xmas Eve – my father's POW Christmas story is always one he would tell that would make me feel a senes of hope, faith in something greater, and awe for all our brave men and servicewomen – I share it with you because he isn't here to share it with me https://t.co/9tHirfT6h2
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) December 24, 2018
John McCain, who died on Oct. 26, once served in the Navy. He was shot out of the sky and taken as a prisoner of war (POW) in October 1967 during his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam.
In the “POW Christmas story” Meghan McCain mentioned, John McCain described one of his experiences as a POW in his 2017 book “Character Is Destiny.”
He was struck almost daily by a sadistic guard and sometimes subjected to torture during years of solitary confinement, John McCain wrote in his 2017 book.
In one occasion, he was kept overnight in a punishment cell tied very tightly in ropes.
“On this particular night as I sat on the stool cursing my bad luck, and straining against the painfully tightened ropes, the door suddenly opened and a young gun guard I had occasionally seen wandering around the camp entered the room. He motioned to me to remain silent by placing his finger to his lips, and then, without smiling or even looking me in the eyes, proceeded to loosen the ropes that bound me. His kind action completed, he left without uttering a word to me. As dawn approached, he returned to tighten the ropes before he finished his watch and another guard might have discovered what he had done,” he wrote.
John McCain met that guard many times without interaction after that.
Then, on one Christmas morning, as McCain was looking at the sky out of his cell, the guard walked near him and showed him a symbol of “Merry Christmas.”
“For just that moment I forgot all my hatred for my enemies, and all the hatred most of them felt for me,” John McCain wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to the report.
