Write about a time that you were the bearer of bad news
...
Crap.
Okay, yeah.
Four years and y'know? Once in a great while I still think something stupidly pointless like 'he'd love to see this movie' or 'Jamie(my nephew, my sister's baby) looks just like Nicholas' baby pictures.'
I did that a lot the first weeks after--the Air Force sent us a visitor.
Like I kept tripping over the idea that my older brother was being shipped home in a metal box. I couldn't hold onto it. Too big, or maybe I was too small to hold onto it.
'Course I learned. You do. It's not like anyone gets a choice in the matter.
Nico was three years older than me. He was the jock of the family, played football and was on track and field teams up until he graduated from high school. He went into the Air Force after that. Not 'by default' or anything.
He had the grades, but he had told our parents he wasn't sure he wanted to go to college. A few universities offered him athletic scholarships. He thought about it. In the end, he decided he was only going to go if and when he was sure that sports was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
Basic training was a breeze for him. He eventually went into their pilot training. Mom and Dad worried, when he got sent overseas. Never said anything aloud, though; they were proud of him, too.
Yeah, so was I.
His first tour of duty ended 2001. Summer.
Then...
well, you know the dates, you can figure out that he reenlisted not too long afterward. He was home for maybe eight months in between.
Iraq.
He got leave a couple of times. He wouldn't talk much about what it was like over there.
He had lost weight, the last time I saw him, and had scars on one leg and his left side where shrapnel from an explosion got him.
He'd grown up. He was ...so different. Harder. Got this distant look in his eyes sometimes. Wherever he 'went', it was like there was nothing but shadows for him to look at. Not even a memory of sunlight.
But he was still my brother. I didn't care if he came back quieter, or marked, or not laughing as much as he used to...I just wanted him to come home.
Then someone in uniform that I didn't recognize knocked on the front door of my parents' house. I was home for a week, post graduation from college, before I went off to an apartment on the East Coast.
I wouldn't let him talk to my parents first. They just--No. It wasn't going down that way.
Dad was in the toolshed out back. Mom was upstairs in the kitchen, fixing lunch. I told him to sit down, please, and I'd go find them.
How do you find words to tell someone that ...? I did. Maybe practice would've made it smoother.
And maybe it should hurt, shouldn't be pat phrases and official sympathy. I don't disparage Nico's fellow soldiers--oh, Jesus, no way ever I would. But if dying or killing's easy...no, that's not good. It just isn't. People find it too easy already, some of 'em.
Crap.
Okay, yeah.
Four years and y'know? Once in a great while I still think something stupidly pointless like 'he'd love to see this movie' or 'Jamie(my nephew, my sister's baby) looks just like Nicholas' baby pictures.'
I did that a lot the first weeks after--the Air Force sent us a visitor.
Like I kept tripping over the idea that my older brother was being shipped home in a metal box. I couldn't hold onto it. Too big, or maybe I was too small to hold onto it.
'Course I learned. You do. It's not like anyone gets a choice in the matter.
Nico was three years older than me. He was the jock of the family, played football and was on track and field teams up until he graduated from high school. He went into the Air Force after that. Not 'by default' or anything.
He had the grades, but he had told our parents he wasn't sure he wanted to go to college. A few universities offered him athletic scholarships. He thought about it. In the end, he decided he was only going to go if and when he was sure that sports was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
Basic training was a breeze for him. He eventually went into their pilot training. Mom and Dad worried, when he got sent overseas. Never said anything aloud, though; they were proud of him, too.
Yeah, so was I.
His first tour of duty ended 2001. Summer.
Then...
well, you know the dates, you can figure out that he reenlisted not too long afterward. He was home for maybe eight months in between.
Iraq.
He got leave a couple of times. He wouldn't talk much about what it was like over there.
He had lost weight, the last time I saw him, and had scars on one leg and his left side where shrapnel from an explosion got him.
He'd grown up. He was ...so different. Harder. Got this distant look in his eyes sometimes. Wherever he 'went', it was like there was nothing but shadows for him to look at. Not even a memory of sunlight.
But he was still my brother. I didn't care if he came back quieter, or marked, or not laughing as much as he used to...I just wanted him to come home.
Then someone in uniform that I didn't recognize knocked on the front door of my parents' house. I was home for a week, post graduation from college, before I went off to an apartment on the East Coast.
I wouldn't let him talk to my parents first. They just--No. It wasn't going down that way.
Dad was in the toolshed out back. Mom was upstairs in the kitchen, fixing lunch. I told him to sit down, please, and I'd go find them.
How do you find words to tell someone that ...? I did. Maybe practice would've made it smoother.
And maybe it should hurt, shouldn't be pat phrases and official sympathy. I don't disparage Nico's fellow soldiers--oh, Jesus, no way ever I would. But if dying or killing's easy...no, that's not good. It just isn't. People find it too easy already, some of 'em.