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by Travis Harman
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Practically everyone was in tears except for Mike’s son who sat there playing on his tablet as if it were any other day. I guessed him to be around the age of my middle son, who had just reached double digits. Maybe he was in shock or too young to understand.
I waited in line to say my goodbyes and asked myself, “How could he do this? What does he know that I don’t…”
When it was my turn to say goodbye, I almost ran out of the room. The body in the casket didn’t even look like him. He was lying there, with his eyes closed but they were elongated and looked unnatural. Not the usual bright blue eyes that sparkled with a touch of sadness that I was used to.
The funeral home did a shitty job putting his face back together. I could see the makeup caked on his face covering all his blemishes and the scars from where the bullet left. His scraggly beard reached his chest by now. A pack of smokes were tucked into his left jean pocket and the top poked out. A Dysfunctional Veteran’s hoodie adorned him. His sleeves were scrunched up so that you could see his tattoos, which revealed his Joker tattoo that represented our bond. What a difference from when we were at war, just baby-faced kids back then.
I finished saying goodbye to him with a touch of his hand and quickly made my way outside to collect my thoughts. My mind drifted as the people around me sobbed. I looked down the stairs to see a soldier standing there. It was Brad from our platoon overseas. He was the one that told me Mike was no longer with us. I stared into his eyes as I went back to a time when we were younger and not so serious.
A decade-and-a-half prior, I was fresh out of bootcamp and sent to Afghanistan before I could even drink. Mike and I were the babies of Joker platoon with each just turning twenty when we left the states for our new home. He was a machine gunner and had a lot of weight to carry with his belts of ammunition and his automatic weapon but could handle it with his stocky build. At times though he would have trouble maneuvering the terrain on patrols because of a bad leg injury. Little did I know, but he wouldn’t be able to carry the weight of the war.
Brad would often say, “You two could be brothers if I didn’t know any better Harman.”
We looked nothing alike, but we loved a lot of the same things. Tattoos, girls, weapons, any topic you could think of, we most likely agreed upon. We loved grunge and alternative music and even some heavier metal. We both thought the war and the world was all fucked up and the only way we’d make it out alive was with one another’s help. We were cut from the same cloth and through blood, sweat, and tears, we would become brothers for life.
After the deployment we tried to keep in contact as much as possible, but usually it only amounted to liking each other’s posts on Facebook or having a platoon get-together every couple of years. I quit going to the platoon reunions and lost touch with my brothers as time went on. I was in my own personal hell and couldn’t bear to be reminded of what we had endured together overseas and so I cut all ties. That was until now, fourteen years later.
I snapped back to reality as I could hear the agony and pain that came pouring out of the attendees in the form of cries and sobs. I looked to Brad and said my goodbyes. We embraced one another as we had when we were young soldiers. Consoling one another, letting the other know that we were there for them through thick and thin. I walked to my car and sat with myself for a moment. Shame and guilt began to consume me as all I could think about was how I let them down, specifically Mike. There was no sign from him that he was in turmoil and would end his life. Deep down though I knew what he was going through because I was too.
I should have been there for him. I let him down…
Mike’s war had ended, but mine continued.
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Travis Harman is an MA student in creative writing with a concentration in nonfiction at Wilkes University. He has an Associates of Arts in Liberal Arts from Southern New Hampshire University. He has been published for nonfiction in The Antonym and Line of Advance Literary Review, and for poetry in Veteran’s Voices Magazine. He was a finalist for the 2022 Annie Dillard Creative Nonfiction Award.
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