I just felt like I needed to write something tonight. It's a short short. What do you all think? jon Goodbye, Charles J. M. Strother My life has been full. Full of joy. Full of pain. Full of hardship and happiness, sorrows and delights. Eighty-five years makes for a full life, after all. Now, in an instant, I see it reflected back at me like tiny dioramas flashing through my mind. The joy of coloring books on the living room floor, while staying home from school with the measles, my mother fussing over me, due to my illness. Like so much of life, a mix of good and bad, but it is the good that stayed with me. The fever and itch are really completely forgotten. I see my friends at play, and at mischief. Mischief never very bad, but mischief none-the-less. My mother would be so disappointed in me. But, as they say, boys will be boys. I do not regret these petty transgressions. In the scheme of things they are but a triviality. God surely will not damn me for soaping old man Johnson's windows. There is my seventh grade history teacher, Miss McMann. I lost my heart to Miss McMann, there in the seventh grade. She was tall, and dark, witty, pretty, stern and fair. I had had crushes before, but none like Miss McMann. I was heartbroken when I learned she was getting married, and devastated when she and her new husband moved out of state during the following summer, never to be seen again. I think I still love her, really, a love that never was. But there were loves. Not many, but a few, starting in my late teens. I see Helen and Caroline, both in senior year, and then Audry in college. We were going to marry, but never did. We graduated and went our separate ways. She back to Richmond, to work in her father's store. His was one of the lucky ones that survived the hard times. I stayed in Blacksburg, to pursue my Master's Degree in chemistry. Then the war came along, December 7th, and my life took unexpected turns. I joined the the Marines out of a sense of patriotism, and rage. Deemed officer material, having a college degree, I soon found myself on the Pacific Isles. There was nothing pacific about them. We trudged form island to island, fought, killed, and died. A life of abject fear, constant loss, rotting toes. My toes still itch. I was no hero, but neither was I a coward, and did my best to keep my men alive. I grieve the ones I failed. But without the war I would never have met Suzzi, in Occupied Japan. She was unlike any woman I had ever known, quiet yet self assured, and quick to laugh despite the hardships she had endured throughout the war years. We met at a dance, and arranged to meet latter, which was of course, forbidden. Yet another of my transgressions in life. And what a wonderful transgression it was. We married. Then there was Michael, and Paul, and James. Three boys. I was never blessed with the daughter I so much wanted, but cherished the gifts I was given. Children, I believe, are the greatest joy and pain a person can experience. They made me appreciate what my own mother and father had put up with. And more. Unfortunately, much more. Michael died at the age of two, taken by the flu, those bright eyes and that infectious giggle gone for good. I would have rather lost my right arm and both eyes. Indeed, I would have easily traded my life for his. But life is what you get, the bad with the good. And that's about as bad as it gets. Other images pass by, fleeting glimpses, passing ever quicker. Jobs won and lost, little league, camping in the mountains, graduations, weddings, grandchildren. Then there are the foggy years, when my memory began to fail, not much imagery stored up from these latest years. But all in all a good life, a full life. I can't complain. So now I look down at the bed, where I lie with the family gathered round, and regret little. This time comes to all. I am no exception. There is Suzzi, and Paul and James, Paul's wife, and most of the grandkids. The doctors are gone, to allow for a moment of privacy, the machines are, at long last, disconnected. I feel free, light and light hearted. I look at Suzzi as I float away, and manage catch her eye. She looks up to me with a wry smile, gives a little wave, Goodbye, Charles. Paul pulls her to his side and strokes her hair. And I am gone.

If Charles was an officer, he would have had to stay in the service longer than the duration. I would have expected him to remain in the service longer. You have to be clearer on that point was he a non-comm enlisted man? If he was an officer why did he leave the service? Dis he "negate" Korea the ten years in would have been 1951 and Korea was front page. He was a marine, in the Pacific, in Japan, he would have seen Korea. Officers didn't just come and go: an act of Congress is not given lightly.

My father was an officer in WWII, and he was only in for the duration. While he was not a Marine (Army Air Corps) I assume the same could have been true for other branches. They made low grade officers, or 90 day wonders as my dad called them, just becasue they needed to fill the ranks quickly, and I don't think they were ever inteneded to be made into career officers. I did no research on this, just working from memory of my father's experience. jon

So the position was like a warrant officer. My brother was in the marines, an E-5, and was offerred a commission under warrant, because he had no college. He went from W01 to WO2 then got a full commission to O2 finally retiring as a full O3 after 20. (But see that's in the marines.) The shavetails were at Quantico,VA. I used to go there to siphon blood from them, when I was stationed at tower 13 in Bethesda. Of course all those places are right in your backyard.

He was a Second Lieutenant, if I remember correctly - the lowest officer grade the AAC had to offer. I probably should not have made Charles a Marine, since their grades are more foreign to me than those of the Army or Air Force, but he is a conglomeration of people I know; my dad (the 90 day wonder), an uncle that was a Marine in the pacific commands, and my mother who has Alzheimer's. Not my backyard. I'm from Missouri, but my dad came from Virginia and Richmond and Blacksburg were (and are) still familial locales and I've been there fairly often. jon

Still you're familiar with the scene in MD and VA. Like I was writing about the park where Old Mill Road split from Rockville Pike. One Road goes up towards Annapolis, the other over to Walter Reed. Bethesda is right in the middle. And isn't Quantico just south of Alexandria about 10 miles or so as I recall.

While I understand authenticity and accuracy are important, I don't know that the complexity of miliary rankings is as important (to me) as your effort to express what this moment at the end of a person's life might be like. You write so very well, Jon. I'm looking forward to being in line to buying your novel.

Thanks dialyn. That was the point of the story. It was driven by two events that I find fascinating and by the book our book club read last month, Passage - by Connie Willis. My father had an older brother that died of blood poisoning at the age of 20. They lived on a farm at the time, his brother was gravely ill, and my dad was sent out to collect the eggs. On the way back to the house he said that just as he got to the yard gate a gray wisp came out of the house down the path to the gate, got to him, and then veered up into the sky. He went into the house and was told his brother just died. And then when my mother-in-law died two years ago, in a hospital bed much like Charles', my father-in-law suddenly looked up towards the window, reached out and said "Goodbye Dori" as if he saw her there. Both very thought provoking instances, to my mind. jon

I have heard tell that a person who is weighed before and after death will show a weight loss (I don't know if that's true or not...it's something I read somewhere and I'd be hard pressed to find the reference now). I suppose there are scientific reasons why that would be true, but it does make one think that there is more that liquids and solids involved. I know when I held my little dog Sally (this will be short, I promise) that I felt the change in her as she died. I didn't see anything as substantial as what you describe, but I certainly could feel the release of something. I wasn't there when my father died, but here's a funky little thing that I don't completely have an explanation for (though I am sure there is a logical one). He never saw me buy my own house. I moved without changing addresses because I knew I would still pick up mail and packages at my mother's house. Quite arbitrarily, it seemed, I started getting mail with my father's name on it at my new house when he had been dead several years by then. The day I found out my Sally had cancer, I got yet another piece of mail with his name on it. I'm not going to get all fuzzy over this...the rational explanations abound. But in my heart, I know he is looking after her now. And if you don't like that explanation, that's your problem and not mine. I suppose people need comfort when a loved one dies, but I see no reason to think that what they see with their eyes and hearts is less true than a scientist's calculations. The great wonder and mystery of life (and death) is that we simply don't know everything there is to know...and we never will.

Sorry to hear about Sally. I've lost dogs too, and know it hurts. jon

I didn't bring her up to continue my grief thread...it's just that death is more on my mind right now than at other times, and the mysterious passing from one stage to another was echoed in your story.

I like your piece, jstro... I like the way it put out such a theme, the death is a natural thing... and it shouldn't be really so sad to end a well spent life (I mean a full life)... Ok, I don't really know what I'm trying to say... I've just lost an aunt (yesterday)... and somehow I find the atmosphere you convey in your piece so fitting with her life and with her going... no possibility to say her our last goodbye, but I can immagine it could have been thus... Okay, forgive my intruding here... It is strange how a piece can go to your soul if read in a particular moment...

I don't think you intruded, jgeorge. If I were Jon, I'd be honored that the story touched you so. That's what most authors want...to connect to the reader in an intimate way. My thoughts are with you.

No intrusion at all, jgeorge - I am looking for comments. I'm glad you liked it and indeed honored that it touched you. jon

Commenting as a reader, it touched me too. For some reason, I am left with a picture in my mind of an elderly man who had the most beautiful smile. I feel that you have made an ordinary man seem special. His reflections on his life give me the impression that he will be remembered with love and missed by those who knew him. So I guess that means I liked it :-)