5/30/2007
To Late
Red2Alpha says,
Try, if you can to describe a loved one in his last hours of life. The light of Life in his eyes. The last moments that you saw him animated, sun filled hallway, the tile gleaming under his booted feet. A man, a boy, a Soldier you have know for years. You know his wife, his daughter-remembering the day she was born and the happy look in his eyes - you know the trouble he has been through, with his wife with his father. Not knowing what to tell him, this young man with a family, since you don’t have any of those things but this Soldier looks up to you as a Leader, looking for help.
Like a son you have tried to help him, mentor him, sat for hours with him in a tower in Kuwait and listened to him, his worries and fears, his hopes and dreams. This boy was… This boy, this man… was all the mistakes you could have prevented as a youth. He was the Hope you once had. He could do It with the right advice, the right words. You loved him but you didn’t know it at the time, oh, maybe you did, but it wasn’t real… It wasn’t Real. Death could never touch us here. Not here, not standing in front of the 1SGT as his squad leader, defending your best Soldier, as he admitted why he spent a weekend in jail. “But get him away from the civlians, Top, and the man shines…”
He comes over to your apartment and talks about his life, his wife, his daughter, his love, the light of his life. You drink beer with him as he folds laundry and never calls you by your first name because,”It wouldn’t be respectful, you know? I can’t call you Mike, Sgt D.” You cry infront of him, tell him that there is a great hole in your soul that needs to be filled but can’t be. You need Hope but it’s not there. He tells you to hold on that he loves you in the words that men cannot say to each other.
A year and half later, he is dead, his heart shattered by a sniper and you don’t know it yet, hoping it’s some IA or IP, but you have already heard the name over the radio. Duplaintier. Thinking you will see him back at Falcone so you can give him shit about being shot, but he’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
You will never see him laugh again, never sit with his little girl again and try to draw Spiderman for her as the leadership of the squad tries to figure out the new hand and arm signals for LOA and ACE reports.
The last time you see him is in a black bodybag, intabation tube in his mouth, eyes glassed over, skin waxy, like a dead fish in the market. Touch his hair,cut short to the scalp like your own, expecting him to sit up and tell you it will all be ok, it was all a joke. He is still alive.
But the skin is cold, lifeless. and you think of that morning, the last time you saw him alive and wish you would have stopped, for one second, and asked him how he was doing, how his Leave was.
Only now it’s to late.
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