For Your Tomorrow (27 page)
Authors: Melanie Murray
“No,” he says, “not now. But I’ll be back.”
“Do you like it there?” she asks. “Is it a better place?”
“It’s not better, but it’s a good place,” he says. “But I’m worried about Ry … about how he’ll get along without me. And …”
“What else?”
“Oh … you guys … you’re probably going to spoil him.” He smiles. “But I have to go now.”
“Jeff, can you leave me something so I can show Dad and Mica that you were really here?”
He hands her a small khaki notebook with a padded cloth cover
.
“And I want to give you something, so you can show Granny and Clifford that you’ve been here with me,” she says, and stretches her rubbery camouflage Support-Our-Troops bracelet off her wrist
.
Like a slow dissolve in a movie, he gradually fades out of sight
.
In the half-light of early morning, she wakes, filled with the wonder of her dream visitation: the texture of the fine hair on his arms, the stubble on his face, the bristly growth on his shaven head; the sound of his voice, his shy grin. She grabs her journal and writes down all its vivid detail, so alive in her mind. She gets up, and is about to pull the blankets over to make the bed. Against the white sheet lies the camouflage circle of her Support-Our-Troops bracelet. Her eyes fill up with tears, and she smiles.
Yes, he really was here
.
W
HEN
M
ARION AND
R
USS
visit the Wallace Cemetery on October 31, faded red, orange and yellow leaves blanket the gravesite. On top of Jeff’s military marker sit two small pumpkins.
As soon as they arrive back home, they phone Sylvie to tell her about the pumpkins that have mysteriously appeared on Jeff’s grave. “Who could have left them there?” she asks.
“It seems like a strange thing for someone to bring. Anyone but me that is, or …” She laughs, warmed by the thought of this manifestation, and the memory of their first date with pumpkins on this day fourteen years ago.
G
ALE FORCE WINDS
blow off the Northumberland Strait, and two-metre breakers pound on the shores of Wallace Bay. A relentless downpour pelts the crowd huddled around the cenotaph on one of the darkest, stormiest Remembrance Days in Wallace’s sixty years of services. His green-blue MacDonald tartan kilt buffeted by the wind, his forest-green jacket and Glengarry beret sodden with rain, the bagpiper plays a medley of Gaelic laments: “Mists over the Mountains” and “Going Home,” the high-pitched melody rising above the bluster of the storm. Marion and Marilyn lay a poppy-studded wreath for their father, following a tradition of many years. Marion, a silver cross pinned to her dark blue anorak, places another wreath for the first time, for her son, his name inscribed—alone—on a side of the black granite pillar:
JEFFERSON CLIFFORD FRANCIS
1970—2007
AFGHANISTAN
After the service, the family drives the few kilometres to the cemetery. The young piper, Corporal Eric Graham from the West Nova Scotia Highland Regiment, positions
himself beside a tall pink granite headstone—his great-grandfather’s—just behind Jeff’s grave. He stands against the wind and the rain, sounding Jeff’s threnody down the yellow-brown hillside and over the wave-churning sea:
And now this soldier, this Scottish soldier,
who wandered far away and soldiered far away,
sees leaves are falling and death is calling
and he will fade away, in that far land.
Back in Eastern Passage that evening, they cook his special dishes: spicy chicken-kung-pao, traditional shepherd’s pie and an airy “Gone with the Wind” birthday cake. Jeff’s place is set at the table beside his photo. They raise their Scotch glasses to him, toasting his thirty-seventh birthday with a dram of his favourite Glenlivet.
O
N
N
OVEMBER
13, Sylvie takes possession of their new home on Sonata Place. She and Ry wander through unfurnished rooms that echo with their own emptiness. Ry—just turned one year old—crawls along the smooth hardwood floors, an eager explorer. He stops at the stairs and pushes himself up onto his feet. He takes a few wobbly steps, his arms out like wings, then collapses into Sylvie’s waiting arms. In the bathroom, they look into the wide mirror, smiling at their reflection. “Da-dee!” Ry says.
“Où?” Sylvie asks.
“Là!” he says, pointing into the glass. Sylvie spins around, a tingling down her spine. An invisible presence hovers in the air.
W
INTER IN
E
ASTERN
P
ASSAGE
is long and cold. Wispy sea smoke drifts like phantoms over the iron-grey waves. For Marion and Russ, the frail light and frozen earth reflect their inner being. It is April that’s the cruellest month. The greening grass, bursting bulbs, budding lilacs, nesting robins belie their inner wasteland—where nothing is reborn. They haven’t yet returned to the world, have no social contacts but close family and friends. Most people don’t understand what they’re going through, and dispense platitudes to “be strong,” “find closure,” or “get on with it”—as if their lives were a road trip, and grief but a brief pit stop along the way. Even worse, some acquaintances avoid asking them how they’re doing, fearful of evoking their sadness and tears.
News of more deaths in Afghanistan revives the trauma of those darkest days. And the controversy swirling around the Canadian military’s continued involvement in the mission rubs salt into their wounds. “Such a waste of life,” they hear people say. “Our Canadian soldiers—pawns of the powerful.” On April 29, Marion writes in her journal,
A year ago today I hugged Jeff for the last time
.
Just finished reading a letter that Nichola Goddard wrote home
to her parents, with this quotation from Theodore Roosevelt
—
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly … who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring so greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.
It says it all, especially to all those anti-Afghanistan armchair cynics who lack knowledge of what this mission is struggling to accomplish, and have no appreciation of the soldiers’ dedication to the mission and to each other
.
Marion and Russ find scant Canadian military services in place to support the families of fallen soldiers—no groups or networking with other grieving military families. Sylvie is entitled to a few sessions with a bereavement counsellor. “You’re doing fine,” she tells Sylvie after their third meeting. “No need to come any longer.” Sylvie doesn’t know how to respond.
Had she answered all the questions properly?
She doesn’t feel fine. The life she thought she was living has disappeared; she’s lost in a netherworld, groping about in the dark for a way out. So she contacts the Military Family Resource Centre at CFB Downsview. After a couple of sessions, the counsellor tells her she’s doing very well. Again,
Sylvie wonders why it doesn’t feel that way. When she moves to Ottawa, she attends a civilian spousal support group, Grieving Families of Ottawa, for eight weeks. But the spouses are older, with adult children; they can’t relate to her situation any more than she can identify with theirs.
No support services are available for Mica. The sibling is the person that’s overlooked, she comes to realize; the concern is mainly for the parents and the spouse. Mica also derives solace through reading, but few books focus specifically on sibling loss. As executor of Jeff’s will, she encounters resistance from the National Student Loan Service Centre in forgiving a small balance remaining on Jeff’s student loan. After months of trying to talk with someone besides a call centre operator, a bureaucrat informs her that no one in the federal government has the authority to forgive this loan; there is no legislation in place for this situation. “This isn’t about the amount of money,” she tells him. “It’s the principle. My brother gave his life in service to our country.” Firm in her conviction, she contacts the MLA of her riding, Peter Mackay—then Minister of Foreign Affairs—and the loan is soon repealed.
On the first and third Tuesday of every month, Marion and Russ drive to the St. Vincent de Paul Church in Cole Harbour. In a carpeted meeting room, they sit in leather chairs around a table with several other people, all parents who have lost a child. The bereavement counsellor, Vince MacDonald, initiates discussion by reading a poem or a story, or asking someone about their week. But he allows
the parents to direct the conversation or to just be silent. On the table in front of each mother and father is a photo of their child, a ceramic heart and a lighted candle. When new people join the group, the members introduce themselves by telling the story of their child’s death. Some are newly grieving parents—one young couple has recently lost their ten-month-old baby. Some have been dealing with their loss for many years, such as the father whose thirty-two-year-old daughter committed suicide ten years ago.
They tell their stories openly and honestly. They each inhabit their own territory of grief, but they speak a common language. For Russ, it’s a safe place to talk—to remove his armour and expose the wounds just below the surface. Marion mainly listens, and cries. Talking with people who are travelling the same road makes their burden more endurable. They are not alone. And they learn from the long-term travellers that there’s no timetable for the journey.
One evening when Marion and Russ are the only parents present, Vince asks her, “So how’s it going?”
“It’s hell,” she says. “Our life is hell. The emptiness is unbearable most of the time.”
“Are you getting out much? Seeing other people?”
“No. I have no desire or energy,” she says. “Just getting through the day is exhausting.”
