“The Sound of a Breaking Heart”
By Ashley Barron
I will never forget the day that they came to collect my son, the same way they had come for my husband and my brother so many years before.
Back then, in a happier, more distant life, the perils of war and the tragedies that come with combat were something that I, and my family with me, had very little knowledge of, and certainly no prior experience with. We were content to exist within the pleasant little bubble that we called ‘life,’ ignoring the trials and tribulations of the world around us. There was no war coming, we imagined, if it didn’t affect us directly.
If I had known how much that would change; how our happiness would fade and slowly be siphoned away, bit by precious bit; how the war and all its hardships and horrors would rise to consume our existences; I often wonder if I wouldn’t have found more time to treasure it while it was ours.
I was in the living room, dusting, when the message arrived. I remember it clearly, the musical chime of the doorbell breaking the almost-reverent silence around me as the purple feather duster slid carefully around the portraits on the mantel, collecting the fine layer of grey lint on the white surface. I would save the pictures themselves for last.
“Kat, could you get the door?” I always hated to stop in the middle of my chores, especially this particular chore.
My twenty-year-old daughter, then, God bless her, was the first one to receive the news. I tuned out the world around me again as she bounced toward the door from the kitchen where she had been making strawberry shortcake, whipped cream and sugar still dusting her hands and cheeks, and reabsorbed myself in the delicate task of dusting, moving on now to the photos themselves. Carefully, I straightened my husband’s picture, adjusting the small glass memorial plaque beside it back into perfectly symmetrical alignment.
I paused for just a moment to let my eyes drift over the words, though I’d read them a thousand times before and knew every syllable by heart.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
LEE FLYNN HOKAMA
1987-2018
FATHER, BROTHER, HUSBAND
A silent tear drifted its lazy way down my cheek, and I hurriedly dashed it away before any more could follow after it.“Mama?”
The sound of my daughter’s voice behind me made me jump in surprise, spinning quickly to face her. Almost immediately, surprise became concern; lines of anxiety had etched themselves into her young face, creasing the skin around her bright hazel eyes and making her look much older than her barely twenty years. When she spoke, her voice was a frightened, shaking whisper.
“Mama?” she repeated, her voice cracking, as if with repressed tears.
“What is it, Kat?” I immediately rushed to her side, my fingers firmly grasping her shoulders as I attempted to decode the emotion raising glassy streams from her eyes, the tears dribbling down her cheeks and onto her shirt. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” My heart was thumping madly within my chest, possibilities of every sort racing through my mind.
Bad grade? Breakup? Friend moving away? …Did someone die?
“Mama… they want Lee.” The words dragged themselves haltingly from her mouth, seconds before she collapsed, sobbing, into my arms, her head pressed into my shirt.
At first, I could only stand unresponsive, my thoughts a tangle of hazy confusion.
Lee? But Lee’s been dead for thirteen years now…
“Mom? Kitty?”
My eighteen-year-old son stepped from his bedroom then, his eyes locking onto his crying sister and sparking with confusion and concern, displaying his emotions as clearly as his father’s once had.
He has his father’s eyes…
“Mom, what’s wrong? What happened? Why’s Kat crying?”
I couldn’t answer him with words; not through the collapsing vacuum that overtook my heart, sucking in every ounce of emotion and leaving me numb and withered and dull. I couldn’t even feel it when the tears came.
My son. They want my son. They’re taking my baby boy, and God knows if I’ll ever see him again. My precious little Lee…
“They’re not taking you,” I declared suddenly, my voice catching on the sudden flood of tears that blurred my vision and choked my breaths.
“Taking me where?” Lee asked, sounding bewildered. “Mom, what is going on? Is there someone I need to go beat up? Did someone hurt Kat?” His eyes flash with anger; he seems to have already decided the answer. “If someone hurt my sister, I’ll kill them.”
Kat just shook her head, completely unable to answer him. That left only... me.
“Lee... sweetheart...” I inhaled, trying to find the ability to breathe that seemed to have deserted me. “The... the recruiters have come. They want you to go and fight, like your father and your uncle Isaac.”
He looked totally shocked. I could tell he wasn’t expecting that answer. Kat burst into a fresh round of sobs, and I stroked her hair gently, unable to meet my son’s eyes, because meeting his eyes was too much like looking into my husband’s eyes. My Lee, who had marched off to war thirteen years ago and come back as an empty shell in a box.
“Well, of course I’m going,” he said after a moment’s pause.
Kat looked up immediately, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ of confusion. “You... what? You can’t! You’ll die!”
“I’m not afraid,” her brother replied quietly.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid!” Kat replied, voice breaking and catching in the snarls of wild emotion pouring out of her. “I’m afraid for you! And Mama is afraid for you! Isn’t that enough? Do you have to be afraid?!”
“Kat, people die,” Lee said simply. “Everyone’s gonna die sooner or later, right?”
“It doesn’t have to be sooner!” she yelled at him. “Why can’t you let it be later?! What is so wrong with boys that they think going off and getting shot is the only thing that makes their life worth something?! Daddy thought that, too, remember?!”
There was a moment of dead silence. Lee was staring at her, and she was staring back; glaring with all her might, as if her glare could somehow bind him to the floor.
“Kat,” I began quietly, but Lee cut me off.
“That’s not what I think,” he said calmly. He was still staring toward us, turquoise eyes full of some unfathomable emotion. I suppose the closest I can come to describing it now is passion.
“Dad didn’t think that, either,” he continued. “Dad and Uncle Isaac went off to fight because they knew it was the right thing to do. They did it to protect you, and to protect our country. It wasn’t because he thought that only getting shot and dying could make his existence meaningful; it was that he had already lived a meaningful life and been happy, and now he was going to pay it back in full.”
“But you’re eighteen,” Kat whispered. “You haven’t lived yet.”
“I’ve lived enough,” Lee told her, smiling slightly. “Eighteen’s as good an age as any to have been happy. I got to grow up with you, and having a sister who loves me and a mom who loves me is plenty enough happiness for me. I’ve had my fill of good fortune. Now I’m going to pay it back, with honor. Like my father did.”
The determination on his face told us that there would be no arguing with his decision; and honestly, what could we even say?
He left three days later, waving goodbye to us with a spark of determination in those beautiful eyes.
I’m still waiting for him to come home.
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