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I hadn’t gone to Johnny’s funeral.  His father had planned a huge memorial for his first-born son…full of praise for the bravery John had shown in proudly fighting for his country.

If I had gone to Johnny’s funeral, this is what I would have said to his father.

“He OD’d on heroin, Mr. Taylor.”

“Maybe you’d like to read all the letters Johnny sent me.  They rip my heart to shreds every time I read them.”

“I don’t want to read them…but it’s all I have of him now.”

“He was so full of pain and horror at having…even accidentally…killed innocent women and children…he couldn’t sleep…not without drugs…and sometimes not even with drugs.”

“His heart was broken after watching so many of his friends blown to pieces right before his eyes or bleed to death in his arms…crying like little kids…so scared…because they didn’t want to die but knew they were going to.”

“He was haunted by the blood that poured from the bodies of all the Vietcong soldiers he had killed…some who looked younger than Alec.”

“He wasn’t a brave hero, Mr. Taylor…he was just trying to survive…just like all the other boys around him.”

“They were all just trying to survive and come home…just come home.”

That’s what I would have said to his father if I had been at Johnny’s funeral.

And…that’s why I stayed away.

 

 

 

 

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The Paperback Edition…

The divorce was final in February…so fast when no one really cares.

Even daughter Sarah was quick to say, “You should have done it years ago, mom.  Dad was such a jerk.”

The papers came in the mail along with an announcement that Portland High School was going to have an All Class-All-Year Reunion in August.  Oh…

My mother died two months after my divorce was final.

My dad had died a couple of years earlier…so now it was just me and remnants of their life.

I was told the house would sell quickly if I priced it cheap enough…so I did.  That house held no special memories for me…I just wanted it to be gone.

There was little I wanted so I threw mostly everything out…Stuart had carried a couple  boxes of photos and miscellaneous papers over to my apartment.

I pushed the boxes into the closet.  I was in no hurry to re-visit the past.

It was two weeks before the class reunion and I finally needed to go through all that stuff in those boxes.

I was looking for a certain picture of Melanie and me that my mom had taken on our first day at Portland High School…two brand-new little freshman girls with scared stiff smiles on their faces.

It would be perfect for the “Then & Now” board that would be displayed at the reunion.  I was going with Mel since Stuart had bailed.  He hated large gatherings and Mel felt she should go since she was on the planning committee.

My mom had kept so much stuff.  I made a mental note to myself to not keep so much stuff…and then I found a diary…her diary.

She had left her personal daily diary…a journal really…one in which she had noted the weather for every day, minor and major illnesses and various appointments….and…

And…in great detail…her plan to end the relationship between Bobby Flanagan and me…after we had re-united that hot summer so long ago.

She even had made a check-list of things to do and little boxes that she had checked off as they got done.  It was almost diabolical in its precision.

And tucked between the pages was one single letter addressed to me from Bobby.

My hands shook so hard as I took that one piece of paper out of the envelope.

It was a heart-breaking letter, where Bobby…just like me…had not understood at all what was happening.

“Please write to me, Sammy!” he had begged…just as I had begged him.

In the letter, he told me he was going to call me…telling me the date and the time.

He promised “he would fix everything”.

“Don’t worry, Sammy,” he had written.  “I love you.  I love you more than anything.”

Of course, I never got that call…having been sent out of the house on an errand by my mother.

And that night, after reading his anguished letter to me over and over, until tears had all but swollen my eyes shut…I fell into a deep sleep and had that strange, lovely dream where Bobby and I were finally together.