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A Letter from Iraq

Darcy Wilmoth

    Everything about that day was surreal. From the protestors waving their hateful signs that told us all how much God hated us, to the police standing there protecting them from angry family and friends, to the bikers that rode in like a gang, making a barricade around the entire place to keep the protestors as far away as possible; but most of all that someone my age, someone so young, whom I had known for years was dead.
    It was hot that day. The kind of heat you can only understand if you’ve survived a Midwest summer. It was July and the heat was overpowering. It could make you lose your mind if you weren’t careful. No one was thinking about the heat though, not today. Any other July day that’s all they would be thinking about.
    We were all seated with pictures of Justin at the front of the church beside his closed casket. One was of him looking too young and incredibly happy with a big smile on his face, wearing a bright blue graduation robe. The other, a far more serious picture, showed Justin in a different uniform; taken only months later, but somehow he looked much older. His white hat was almost covering his eyes which stared straight at the camera with a look that was all business. His huge smile was replaced by a stern, unfamiliar look.
    I sat beside my best friend Meagan, who had been like a sister to Justin. They had met each other at the local grocery store where they had both worked during the summer. The management there was lax, and no one ever seemed to mind that we would all hang around the store, even those of us who didn’t work there, waiting for them to get off work while we talked about what to do that night. The store isn’t there anymore; it was swallowed up by the larger chains like Wal-Mart. In fact, I can’t even remember the name of it now.
    So many of the things and places that held so much magic for us back then are now just a distant memory. Little mom and pop stores that had been there our entire lives were now gone as everyone finally gave in and traded character and nostalgia for convenience.
    It had started out that way, just things and places at first, and then it started swallowing up the people too. Not large chains of course, but just life. The first few years of becoming an adult had proven to be a rude awakening for many of us. Friends who were once so prominent in our lives now seemed to be strangers, while others were lost to us forever.
    I looked over at Meagan and could see she was struggling to keep it together while still wondering if this was some kind of horrible nightmare. Most of the people in the room were still in shock. They knew where they were, they knew the facts of the situation, but their instincts told them that this couldn’t actually be happening.
    The family entered the auditorium and I looked over as his wife came down the aisle, wearing big, dark sunglasses to hide her swollen, tear-stained face. She was being held up by her parents, one on each side of her. She looked as if she could pass out at any moment. It was more than she could handle, and who could blame her. Married only a few months, this wasn’t what she had pictured her life to be like. All hopes for the future had been ripped away from her the day she got the news. All of her daydreaming about their first house, vacations to Australia, maybe even children one day, was now just a bunch of painful thoughts of what could have been, and now never would be. She was twenty-three years old and she was a widow.
    The place had begun to fill up quickly. Justin had had a lot of friends. I looked around and saw it was packed full with people he went to school with, close friends, fellow servicemen, and family. This wasn’t a surprise. He was a kind-hearted person and he didn’t know a stranger. He always made you feel welcome when you were around, like you had been friends forever, even if you had only just met. No, this wasn’t a surprise at all because everyone who knew him had loved him.
    He had been a Marine on his second deployment to Iraq. He served with the Explosives Ordinance Company, and was with his bomb disposal squad, working to disarm an IED, when a second IED, one they hadn’t detected, went off.
    When he first joined the military, we all knew being a Marine could be dangerous, but we chose not to focus on that aspect of it and instead, marveled at the places he got to see. We lived in a tiny town in the Midwest and before he joined the military, Justin, Meagan, and I had spent numerous weekends renting run-down motel rooms by the highway just outside of town. We would find someone old enough to buy us beer, and play drinking games until the sun came up and it was time to go home. Or we would all hop in Justin’s truck and drive around town, listening to stories he told us about old ghosts that still haunted this place. He would talk about joining the military and all of the things he would get to do and see, all of the places he would get to go.
    On one of his visits home, He brought me a t-shirt from Paris. I had never known anyone who had been to France before and I thought it was about the coolest thing ever. The shirt was my favorite shade of blue, with French writing on it that glowed in the dark. I didn’t know what it said, and I didn’t care. I loved that shirt. The thought that this shirt had come all the way from France and now it was here, a place probably no one in France even knew existed, was incredible to me. We were all in awe of the fact that he had been to so many places in just a few short years. And I think probably a little jealous too. At least I know I was.
    The funeral went by in a haze. I watched as person after person got up to talk about what Justin had meant to them and how much he would be missed. Before long we were all back out in the heat again, standing around greeting each other with the standard ‘How have you been?’, not really wanting to know but asking anyway. We all knew how we were.
    As the processional started towards the gravesite, which was all the way across town, we once again had to pass the protesting ass jackets at the highway entrance. Meagan tried not to look at them, because every time she did, she wanted to throw her glass Yoohoo bottle out the window, hopefully hitting one of the little ones in the head hard enough to knock some sense into them so maybe they wouldn’t grow up to be just like their delusional parents. The adults were already too far gone, there was no hope left for them. While I would have been delighted to see her knock the crazy off of one of them, I didn’t relish spending the rest of the afternoon in the county jail. And with a barricade of policemen blocking them off from the public, it would be hard to get off a clean shot. Instead, she kept her head down until we got to the highway, unable to accept the fact that anyone could think God wanted her friend dead.
    I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. Their signs were brightly colored with happy yellows and greens that were in stark contrast with the hateful words printed on them. I watched them go up and down as they thrust them into the sky. I looked at their faces. It was funny, they actually looked pretty normal, not the way I had imagined a cult to look. I wanted one of them to look me in the eyes. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I concentrated really hard and stared at them long enough I could somehow tap into the part of the brain needed for telekinesis and make them spontaneously combust, although even that would have been too gracious a fate for them. The real world was bound to knock them around much better than I could. Telekinesis or no telekinesis.
    When we had finally made it past them to the highway, we looked around and saw something incredible. Cars and trucks were lining the highway on both sides. Drivers had pulled over and got out to stand beside their vehicles, some saluting, some waving small, plastic American flags left over from the Fourth of July. These strangers, people heading home from work, families on their way to dinner, truck drivers passing through this tiny town on their way to Albuquerque or Memphis, stopped what they were doing and just stood there with their hands to their hearts, paying their respects to a stranger, to someone they had never known, to our friend. It took my breath away. These people lined the streets for miles, the entire way through town. I thought about how much he would have loved this, all of these people showing him so much attention and love; he would have gotten a real kick out of it. I could practically hear him say, “All of this for little ole me?” with that huge, bright smile on his face.
    He had been an incredible person. A much better person than me, that’s for sure. Now, I know everyone says that about people they know who have died, but in this case it happens to be true. He risked his life when he didn’t have to. He could have stayed home with us, renting shitty motel rooms on the weekends, getting drunk and playing cards, just sort of drifting through our youths with no real regard for anyone besides ourselves. I knew I could never be as selfless as him.
    Finally we arrived at the gravesite. He had a good spot on the hill. There was a large tree nearby, casting shade over the grass and stone. We were all sweating just standing still but no one seemed to mind. I looked at his closed casket and tried not to think about what was inside of it. I stood back and watched as two Marines folded an American flag with quick precision and one knelt down to hand it to Justin’s wife. As he did this, he said something to her. I never knew what it was that he said to her, but I was always curious. I wasn’t meant to hear those words though, none of us were. Those words were for her only, as they should have been. I wondered how many times these Marines had had to do this very thing. How many times had they folded that flag to be able to do it so perfectly? How many young widows had they had to console?
    Moments later, they were lined up with rifles in their hands as an officer yelled out commands I didn’t understand. BOOM! The guns were fired and I jumped a little. The rifles firing didn’t seem to faze his now-widow in the slightest. BOOM! Again, she sat staring straight ahead at the wooden casket in front of her. BOOM!, went the final round of fire, and even though I knew it was coming, I still flinched as she remained perfectly still.
    When it was all over, some people went back to Justin’s mother’s house to bring food and condolences. We watched as people began to get into their cars and leave. Some of us just sort of stood around for a minute, not sure what to do. Were we just supposed to go home and carry on with our lives as if it were any other day? This was a real-world situation we were not prepared for. I thought about driving outside of town and renting one of those motel rooms, but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. Best to just leave those memories intact, let the best times live in the past. Nothing could ruin a good memory like trying to re-create it. So I went home and continued to live my life like it was any other day because, to my surprise, the world didn’t stop or even slow down.
    He had once written me a letter from Iraq, and besides a few old pictures, it was the only thing I had left of him. He had written it at a time when I had needed a friend, and in true fashion, he was there to put things into perspective. The return address in the top left corner of the envelope made no sense to me. It seemed to be random numbers and letters thrown together. When I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter, the paper was dirty and gritty feeling, like dirty sand. I was surprised by how normal he had sounded in the letter. Not scared, or fucked up somehow, just normal. He told me that he lived outside and that was why the paper was so dirty. He assured me that he did not have to pee in the gas suit he had to wear, but that he did only get a shower about once a week. He told me that he still got homesick every once in a while, but for the most part it had passed. He said that he had been involved in some of the things that had been in the news recently and that he had had to kill people. This was the most shocking to me, that he could even be capable of doing something like that. But they did what they had to do to survive, and I knew that was a concept I was lucky enough to not understand, and hopefully never would.
    At the end of the letter he had signed off with these strange markings that stuck out like a sore thumb among his small, boxy, English print. They were beautiful large and curvy markings that ran together and looked like an odd sort of cursive. They reminded me of one of those pictures that you had to look at for a moment before you could make sense out of it; the ones that looked like one thing at first, but the more you looked at it, became something else entirely. Right below those markings he had translated:
    Peace be upon you, they said in Arabic.
    Your friend, Justin.

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