America! His name is Grant Cotting

[wilomn]

I knew a boy once. A nice boy, sort of a dork really. He loved his Mom and Dad, never in any serious trouble, and always a big smile with shy eyes that his hair was constantly falling in front of. I doubt if he ever had a serious girlfriend.

He was a funny kid. Not the mean kind who play jokes on others but one of those who liked to make people laugh. He could twist his face up pretty fierce if there was a good laugh waiting to be had from it. He enjoyed a good laugh, especially if he was the cause of it. He told a good joke too.

Tall and skinny, turn him sideways and you’d easily mistake him for a fence post. He wasn’t the strongest boy I ever knew but he was one of the truest. He stood by his friends and stayed by his word, even as young as he was. There’s a lot to be said for that. Knowing that, he never said much about it. He had honour.

Now don’t go thinkin’ I’m makin’ him out to be perfect, he was far from it, which made him even better. He didn’t mean to knock the lamp over and break it. He meant it even less the second time. But he owned up to it to save anyone else from getting in trouble, even though no one but the dog knew he did it the second time. He was that kind of boy. Never asked a single thing from Old Mrs. Reefles and must have hauled her groceries and raked her yard a million times. Or at least a few dozen. He just did it to help. He was that kind of kid.

I never had to carry anything heavy by myself if he was there. I never had to ask for help either. He did it because he thought he should, because someone had taught him it was right. I would have been proud to call him son instead of just friend.

Doing right was important to him. He was a good boy.

Doing right called him to service in a foreign land. A land where we are not welcomed as invited guests but seen as usurpers and supplanters of a long lived way of life, where we are not celebrated as a force fighting for liberation but tolerated as interlopers, killed in the dark of night as loathsome enemies. Others like him had gone before, others like him would follow, but he felt that now was his time to go. Doing right, he signed up and left. We were all so proud.

So he went. Because he thought it was right to fight beside the other sons and brothers, cousins and uncles, boys and men who had no stake in a country they didn’t want to be in, fighting people who only wanted their homes and a job and their families to be safe, to be able to walk at night without being shot; the things HE left behind, those very things. He was in a country fighting to give them what he had left at home. He did what he thought was right not for any gain of his own, not for profit or pleasure. He did it because he thought he should.

And when he comes home, which he will in just a few days, it will be in a plain pine box, keeping him still and straight, starched and pressed and clean for the last time, for that final journey that ends when the hole is filled and a good boy is a memory only.

I knew this boy, this child, this person who made me laugh and now makes me cry and I loved him. He was a good boy.

[wilomn]

Out of words but not feelings.

[wilomn]

another year

[Don]

Wish there were words that could help with your loss.

[wilomn]

Not a lot to say that hasn't been said already.

[wilomn]

bump**

[wilomn]

Still losing too many kids for nothing.

[Ogre]

I'm sorry for your loss, I know you've heard it but I felt it needed saying. Also as someone who has served I agree with you.