She allowed him to pull it from her hand.
“What does it say?” I demanded, knowing full well he hadn’t had enough time to figure out what it was about.
Sometimes you just know when things are bad. The sense of dread cloaking me affirmed without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever the letter contained—it was something very ominous.
Neil’s face went pale, and my heart skipped a beat as I continued to rub up and down Mum’s arm.
“It’s from the US Department of Defense in Washington D.C.” He looked at me with compassion in his beautiful dark eyes that loved me so well, and tried to soften the blow.
My hand flew up to my mouth in a gesture to brace myself. “Dad?”
“Yes. It says they’ve identified the remains of George Morrison through advanced DNA analysis. It is a request for the wishes of the family to be made known to them so…the final resting place for his bodily remains can be, um…resolved.” Neil hated to say those words to us. I could tell it hurt him to speak them.
“Oh…Mum…” Nothing else would form on my lips. I was so stunned, trying to process what the letter was asking of us, and worried about the present state of my mother I couldn’t really come up with anything better. What was there to say? Dad was gone, as he’d been since 11, September, 2001. This certainly brought up so much of the feelings I’d put away deep, deep inside of me. They shot straight to the top of the emotional queue, all in a split second. I couldn’t even imagine how Mum dealing with it…and that she’d kept it to herself and not told her children. Well, I could see how she dealt with it. By way of a bottle of Bombay.
And that scared the absolute shit out of me.
“Mum…when did you get the letter?” Neil asked gently.
She choked out another anguished sob and said, “It came a week ago Friday.”
I was afraid to ask the next question, but knew I had to. I looked at Neil and gathered my courage because I had a feeling about what she would say. “What do you want us to do, Mum?”
She snapped her head around to look at me, took my cheek in her hand and held it there. Tears streaming down her lined, but still beautiful face, she told me what she wanted.
“My darling, please—please go there and bring him back—bring Daddy back to his home—to the family that loves him. I cannot b-bear the thought of him being…th-there all alone…and so far away from us.”
“Okay, Mum. I will go.”
I answered my mother quickly because I already knew what she was going to ask me. Also, because there was no other answer I could’ve given to her. I would go to Washington D.C. to get my father and bring him home. No matter how hard this was going to hurt, I’d do what had to be done.
“And I’ll be right there with her,” Neil said, embracing both of us into his strong arms, that thankfully could bear the weight of two broken hearts.
The mortuary at Dover Air Force Base housed the remains for victims of the Pentagon crash on 9/11. I wondered how they’d handled the hundreds of families that had come through there, grieving for lost loved ones over the past decade. I mostly worried about how they were going to handle things with Elaina. I pulled her hand, clasped in mine, up to my lips as we walked down the hallway together.
“Okay?” I asked.
Her midnight-blue eyes blinked at me solemnly, and then she nodded. “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
“Nothing could have kept me away. Wherever you go, so must I.”
Elaina mouthed the words “love you” to me as we followed behind the servicewoman who was leading us.
She stopped us at a room that appeared to be set up, just as a viewing area in a funeral parlor would be. Darkened lighting, rich décor with stained-glass windows, and even a platform of sorts. This whole experience was eerie. The very idea that this facility had returned partial remains, so many times, to so many families—the Yanks had been forced to make a room especially for that purpose—was depressing. I worried about what Elaina would be presented with. It didn’t take profound logic to understand that there wasn’t going to be a body for George Morrison. If there had been a body for him, it would’ve been identified almost immediately, not a decade later. There would be very little for the family to claim, and I ached for my girl, and her mother, and brother over it.
“Right through here is where you’ll take possession.” Staff Sergeant Knowles gestured with her arm. “The documentation is on the altar beside your father’s remains, and you’ll take that with you as well.” She gave instructions for Elaina and spoke to her directly. “This room is yours for however long you need it. When you’d like to leave, please use the exit out the hall and to the right. As you come out of the building, you’ll see the car waiting to take you back to your hotel.” She smiled placidly, as if she’d done her small speech thousands of times and could recite it in her sleep. “Whenever you’re ready though. Again, please take all the time you need.”
Yes, Dover AFB had done this far too many times for my liking. The Yanks had a protocol, which had been honed to perfection because of it. I hated the whole thing. I hated that George Morrison had been killed in a terrorist attack. I hated that a good man had been snuffed out needlessly, as so many others had been, in a pointless war, over semantics…and ideals that would never change any minds. Stupid.
My own service in the very same war had made me somewhat of a cynic. Seeing troops die right in front of me was something my mind probably would never let go of. Lost friends and brothers, people you talked to, ate meals with. People you trusted with your life. Lost. Taken. Dead. Was hard for me to evade feelings of guilt, when I still had a life, and they no longer did. Why them and not me?
I also hated that the daughter had to be here claiming the few small bits of her father, a decade after his death so the family had something to bury. I hated what the circumstances of his death had done to Mum, to Ian, and to Elaina. It brought home the knowledge of how quickly somebody you loved could be taken away from you forever. Like Gran, like my own mother.
Sergeant Knowles gave a salute and left us, the sound of her boots in regulated step tapping out a beat as she departed, leaving us in quiet once again.
Elaina started forward to the altar, still holding tightly to my hand. She hadn’t broken down or been visibly upset by going there, but I knew it had to be very hard on her to be the one to actually make the trip. There was never a doubt in my mind about coming with her. She needed me and that was all. Family came first, no matter what. The Morrisons were my family.