He was quiet for a minute, as though he was carefully choosing his words. “As hard as this must be for her, maybe she’s really the only one who can help your mom through this. After all, she’s been there.”
I watched the way Grams reached out to hold my mom’s hand, stroking her skin with her thumb. Josh was right. If anyone was going to pull her back from this precipice she was standing on, it would be Grams. They were equally stubborn women, equally strong, equally capable. “She’s going to be okay, eventually.”
“So are you.” He squeezed my hand gently before quickly pulling it away, careful not to brush the skin of my knee just below my hem.
Riley slipped his phone back into his pocket as we arrived at the cemetery. We stepped from the car and crossed the frozen ground to the plot my father had chosen. At the time, I had thought it was a morbid thing to do, choosing his own funeral plot. Now, I was thankful. It was one more choice I didn’t have to make, and I knew he’d be happy. As we took our seats in the front row, facing my father’s casket, people walked by. They shook our hands. They leaned down to hug us. They were sorry for our loss. They couldn’t fathom our grief. They wanted to know what they could do. I said thank you so many times that it no longer sounded like a word. Selfishly, I just wanted them to stop touching me.
Riley took the seat behind me, keeping his hand on my shoulder, anchoring me as he’d done these last few years. He was my reminder that I would get through this; things would return to normal and our plans wouldn’t change. Well, whatever “new normal” was waiting for me.
“Can you make them stop hugging me?” Gus asked, reaching for my hand. I kissed his soft forehead.
“Sure thing, buddy.” I ran interference for Gus until everyone finally took their seats. Again, the chaplain began to speak about duty and sacrifice. I fought the urge to stand up on my chair and stomp my foot, reminding myself that I was no longer a petulant teenager. What did they know of duty? My father’s duty was here, at home. Now someone else had to step into his shoes, figure out what we were supposed to do from here. It wasn’t fair.
The American flag draped Dad’s silver coffin. I wanted to see him, to verify with my own eyes that he was really dead. But when his remains arrived from Dover, they came with a cutting little note attached: “These remains are not recommended for viewing.” When I got Captain Wilson alone and was able to ask the question, he danced around it until I finally got my answer. Dad was shot in the head, chest, and leg. The asshole had been so thorough there wasn’t enough of Dad’s face left to see.
The small, childlike part of me wondered if he was really in there, or if there had been some drama-worthy mix-up. Maybe the poor soul in this coffin belonged to another family, and my dad was lying somewhere wounded, unable to tell his real name. But I wasn’t Gus. I knew the truth: we were burying my father.
The flag slid from the coffin into the arms of the waiting honor guard. They snapped the flag tight with military precision. That flag had been with him from the hospital in Afghanistan where he was pronounced dead, through Dover where they prepared his body and tailored his uniform, to here in Colorado where we would bury him.
The guns rang out, killing the silence and jolting my heart. The honor guard fired three volleys, each time freezing me until I died just a little bit more. Three volleys for the guns. Three bullets in my father. It was poetic really. Gus began to cry horrible wrenching sobs. I reached for him as the honor guard folded the final corner of the flag into the triangle. Josh leaned forward and pulled Gus over the chair, into his lap, and rocked him like a baby. I nodded my thanks. Across the empty chair I reached for April. She clasped my hand in a death grip as cold as her frozen fingers. We’d forgotten gloves.
A colonel dropped on one knee in front of Mom, grasping the folded flag. She raised her head and brought her chin up, showing a shadow of the spirit I knew she had. “On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation,” he said reverently as he handed the flag to my mother’s shaking hands. She crossed her arms in front of the flag and pulled it to her chest, lowering her face into the folds as if she could catch Dad’s scent on the fabric. Then she began to keen, a low, ugly sound, like her soul had been dismembered.
I held it together until the bugler began to play “Taps.” Day is done, gone the sun. So often I’d heard it around the military bases where we’d been stationed. There was something familiar, cleansing about hearing it played, as though the song itself was saying this awful event was over. This was the worst, the lowest we would ever be. God is nigh.
Grams shook with grief on the other side of my mother. Now she had truly given all she had for this country. She wrapped her arm around Mom, drawing her to her shoulder; they had each lost the person they loved most.
As everyone left the burial, my family piled into the limo, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. The honor guard handed Riley a stack of folded flags, one each for Grams, April, Gus, and myself. Like we needed a memento. War was such a spiteful bitch; she took everything we loved and handed us back a folded flag in return, telling us the honor of their sacrifice was a just and equal payment. It wasn’t.
One of Dad’s five deployments had begun shortly after Gus was born. In the middle of the night, I had watched Dad pack his bags as Mom rocked the crying Gus to sleep. Even at thirteen, I didn’t mind being pulled into my dad’s lap. He’d cradled my gangly frame and kissed my forehead in the way only fathers can do. “I need you to take care of your mom while I’m gone,” he’d requested. “Take it easy on her; this will be tough, and I need you to be my girl of the house. Can you do that for me? Can you take care of your mom, and April, and Gus?” Of course I had agreed. I would have done anything to please my father, as I knew he would have done for me. Anything but stay.