Septembers the month that Loddy died.
The first in what became a list.
A litany of faces fallen.
So strange.
He was always 'older' in that way the upperclassmen are cemented
by the years they've pegged at the academy.
Thus he will remain, always 'older'.
Dead at 22.
Though I find myself five years older than he will ever be.
An odd disconnect...
And Daren never reached 25.
His shoulder braced against the wall, calling minutes to lunch, supressing a smile.
Tom strumming guitar at OCF.
Sal cracking jokes in English...
Rockeman at dinner with Lloyd...
Stocking the humvee with Goeke the night before the plebe retreat...
And now PK, always smiling at something, never phased...
The litany goes on...
For awhile deaths were razors on the heart.
Anger. A burning need for moral reasons in a cold, mathematical universe
Where physics, time, and place have more to do with who dies
than does the merit of their character.
The 'why' is but a function, a numbers game, a hard science of probability, timing, metal and fire...
not part of a grand moral design.
Feeling stops being reasonable.
So one tires of it... grows callous... stops marking the dates and the faces, the new outrages.
Greater loss is needed to reach through the leather of the heart.
One accept that choices bear risk and consequence.
For valiant good or naught.
Death cares not of causes.
And the the still-framed memories are buried,
out of place and unbelonging to a time of shallowness.
And if the best are 'inculcated' to lay their lives on a usurped altar
it is not ours to judge the choice.
Only ours to hold accountable those who point the sword.
The dead don't haunt us.
They but waver like smoke over a snuffed fire.
Fading in the morning wind
Whistling over whispered names and white stones...
of those with whom we shared board and laughter
with those who are naught
but faces fallen.
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