Alone in His Absence

Standing in the rain, he was alone in a crowd of several hundred. His mind blank, he was perfectly still, with a face devoid of emotion. A few present thought they recognized him, but none were convinced he was who they were thinking of, so he was left alone. A solitary wave in a sea of people.

He watched intently as the flag was lifted from the coffin, folded, and presented to a grieving widow. A familiar effect from a familiar cause, hanging heavy on a conscience he thought he managed to let sink into the quicksands of time.

Almost never formally invited, he still managed to almost always show up at such events. It was, as often proverbially pointed out to him, the least he could do.

Surveying the gathered mourners, his gaze crossed some of the men in uniform who were present at his friend's death. He knew that many of those men secretly ridiculed him, the long-haired Army drop-out who had seemingly run from the wars, and this almost made him laugh. For his secrets were far darker and deeper than theirs.

But nobody could know that, not without betraying circumstances and oaths that had long spiraled beyond his control. So, he just stood there in the rain, trying to fight off the creeping guilt of not being there when another friend was killed.

It was a futile guilt, he was well aware, as even when he had been there, friends were still killed and maimed. He, himself, had been injured on a mission, but it wasn't from enemy action... merely the random placement of a random rock that he and his parachute were blown into by a random wind.

The funeral came to a close. The people left, in groups and one-by-one. He continued to stand there and lit a cigarette in order to help pass the seconds ticking away from his mental clock. After a while, only he and the widow remained. Even the pastor had gone to have lunch, a hypocrite in sentiment and in purpose.

Initially, he was going to wait for the widow to leave. He preferred to pay his respects in solitude, alone in the presence of his friend, six feet beneath his shoes. She stayed, however, and didn't seem to want to leave. She wanted to stay with her husband forever, and until the pragmatic conclusion that her own life still needed to be lived, she would continue to stay.

He approached her, offered a cigarette. She wasn't a smoker, but she accepted. The two of them stared at the grave, their silence as deafening as the infinity of dreams in eternal sleep. Cognizant of the stranger beside her, she finally spoke.

"Do you believe in God?"

It was an odd question, he thought, for a woman who just buried her husband in a church cemetery to ask. He shook his head "no" in response. She laughed quietly, disconcerted by the unsympathetic, if somewhat expected, answer.

"Where do you think he is?"

He took a final drag from his cigarette, flicked out its burning embers, and placed the butt in his pocket, an action not unnoticed.

"Did you serve with my husband?"

Turning to her, he allowed the corner of his mouth to smile. He nodded slightly, both acknowledging and ignoring the question, and walked away... leaving her alone in his absence.

For the dead offer no company.

But First, a Funeral

Looking at himself in the mirror that day, he couldn't tell how old he was. Sure, he knew how old he was, but either his eyesight or his mind was partially deceiving him. The grays in his hair seemed to be hidden, the lines around his eyes were gone. Perhaps it was the uniform. After all, he hadn't worn it in a long, long time.

Those were the days. He had escaped relatively unscathed from nearly a decade of service in the Army, but many of his friends had not. Drinking buddies were now lying beneath Mother Earth. Others were making their ways through life missing an arm, a leg, or both. Or all.

It wasn't fair.

Who was he, after all? Often he was referred to as a jerk. A know-it-all asshole who would just as soon shoot his superiors in the back as he would his enemies. So far in life, by his own measure, he had accomplished nothing. Why was he spared?

Certainly, he knew, his old friends were more deserving of a good life. Even the relatively few medals on his chest reminded him that he always fell a little short of the accolades. Not that he minded. He was a bit camera shy, after all, but his friends were red-blooded heroes. And the man in the mirror was not.

He took a breath, straightened his uniform as well as he could. It didn't fit as well as he remembered. A little tighter around the waist, a little looser around the shoulders. But it was his. He had earned it. His friends had died wearing it. And he would put up with looking a little out-of-place in order to honor them... because who else was left to do so?

As he exhaled he realized one strange, yet completely natural, truth. He had to live for all of them. Accomplish all of things that they, together, should have accomplished. His life must turn around, for his existence now had a meaning far greater than he deserved.

Yes, he thought. Great things will happen. For those whose only future is the eternal silence, the eternal darkness, that is memory.

But first, a funeral.

Eulogy for O. Hawkins

I met Omer Hawkins in 2000, when I had transferred from the C Company to the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 37th Engineer Battalion. I didn't know what to make of him at first... a short guy, a chain smoker like the rest of us, with a grating voice that reflected his pack-a-day-plus habit.

He loved the Army and what it had afforded him. Maybe a little too much. When we first started talking, he was on his way out. He wanted to go overseas again... he felt that being in the Army was about being somewhere... anywhere but here, I guess. He wanted to go to Ranger School and a ton of other schools, too. For some reason, the Army wouldn't let him. So, he and I usually talked about what we planned on doing when we got out. He's where I found out about the North Carolina small business start-up loans. You see, he wanted to open up a small vintage bookshop. As I'd come to find out, that was typical Omer. He was very interested in literature, history, art in general... a veritable warrior-poet, one could say. Seriously, because of his interests and his stature, you would wonder what the Hell he was doing in the Army in the first place. But that was Omer... a soldier to the last. Art be damned.

His name was Omer, but we called him Tom. I guess that was his middle name. Regrettably, I have no idea. Although I knew him fairly well, it was only because of work. I had other friends, Dan and Tony, who really hung out with him. Through them I knew Tom liked comic books, liked an occasional game of Dungeons & Dragons. He was eccentric. But, like smoking, so were we all.

Tom died on October 14, 2004. He was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb along with two others. Because Tom being Tom, or Omer being Omer, he had reenlisted and gone back to Korea. When he got there, the 44th Engineer Battalion deployed to Iraq. The first time a unit from Korea would deploy in decades. He was a part of history.

I don't know why I'm writing about him now, almost two years later, but I guess it's no secret that those who have served are often swept by a feeling of nostalgia for the military. I guess today was my day to really think about what I had done during my enlistment. That, and I never really got over the fact that I didn't find out about Tom's death until the day before his funeral... I couldn't make it... and I NEVER miss a funeral. It's called respect. But his was to be the first.

I still have friends that won't face his death. It's too real, too close to home. People often think of soldiers as cold-blooded killers, or, at least, as people who are trained to be... but we're no different than anybody else. Death hits us the same way it hits the rest of society. Some of us can take it, some of us can't. Some of us wait to deal with a friend's death for two years, some of us never deal with it. What do you expect?

There's only one thing I know for sure... I wish to God that Tom would have opened his fucking bookstore.